Deputy General Director of the General Department of State Reserves, Lê Văn Thời

Deputy General Director of the General Department of State Reserves, Lê Văn Thời, talks to Quân đội nhân dân (People’s Army) newspaper about the implementation of rice support for poor students.

What has the General Department of State Reserves (GDSR) done to provide rice to poor local students?

Following the direction of the Prime Minister, the GDSR has issued nearly 40,000 tonnes of rice from the national reserve to support over 560,000 students in 46 provinces and cities in the first semester of the school year 2019-20.

The GDSR has also directed local reserve units to closely co-ordinate with local people's committees and assigned agencies to support the supervision of the process of distributing, receiving, managing, using and preserving rice.

During the delivery and receipt, the parties will co-ordinate to ensure all required procedures.

How do you evaluate the distribution, receipt, use, management and preservation of rice?

At the local level, the provincial people's committees have assigned the departments of education and training to be in charge and co-ordinate with departments of finance to direct relevant units of the districts to work with the reserve units in checking and supervising the distribution and receipt of rice to schools to distribute to students.

Some schools have set up teams to monitor the distribution, use, management and preservation of rice with the participation of parents, teachers and local authorities. They have also assigned specialised staff to directly monitor, inspect and supervise during the process of receiving, managing and using rice as regulated.

Therefore, in recent years, the national reserve rice for students has been strictly managed in a safe, qualified and appropriate way.

However, in addition to the achieved results, there are also some limitations such as difficulties in the facilities of some schools, and the lack of specialised rice storage, thus the preservation and storage have affected the quality of rice, especially in some northern mountainous provinces.

What will the GDSR do to ensure the allocation of rice from the national reserve to support localities?

The GDSR will direct our local units to actively co-ordinate with local authorities to organise the implementation of rice support from the review of policy beneficiaries to the allocation, management, preservation and the use of rice to each beneficiary.

They must ensure compliance with the process, order and provisions of the law on the management and use of national reserve goods.

We will enhance co-ordination with ministries, sectors and localities in examining and supervising the process of allocation, management and use of national reserve rice to support localities to ensure thrift, efficiency, purposes and provisions of law.

Based on the opinions and suggestions of localities in the actual implementation of rice support, the GDSR will co-ordinate with the concerned ministries and sectors to conduct surveys and report to the Ministry of Finance to submit to the Government to use national reserve resources more effectively.

Particularly, we will pay attention to review, amend and develop mechanisms and policies using national reserve resources along the directions of ensuring uniformity, conformity with reality and not duplicating other support policies. — VNS