A rural road paved with concrete in Bình Minh Town’s Đông Bình Commune in Vĩnh Long Province. – VNA/VNS Photo Lê Thuý Hằng

VĨNH LONG – The Cửu Long (Mekong) Delta province of Vĩnh Long is taking measures to promote the potentials of ethnic minority areas to develop them comprehensively and sustainably.

It targets the poverty rate of its ethnic minority households will be reduced by two percentage points a year from now to 2025.

More than 10.1 per cent of ethnic minority households in the province are poor and 9.5 per cent are near poor.

The province targets all ethnic minority households will not lack housing and farming land for production by 2025.

The province also aims for all communes to have paved roads for cars, all schools and health clinics to be built by concrete, and 99 per cent of households to have access to power grids.

It also aims for 50 per cent of ethnic workers to be trained in vocational skills by 2025.

To meet the targets, the province will mobilise all resources for socio-economic development in ethnic minority areas.

The province will focus on developing the collective economy, co-operatives, private economy, the combination of agriculture production and processing, and linkages among stakeholders in agricultural production and consumption in ethnic minority areas.

It will also develop more boarding schools for ethnic minority students to improve the quality of human resources, invest in more infrastructure facilities, especially the transport system, to serve the lives and production of ethnic minority people, and preserve and promote the value of ethnic people’s tangible and intangible culture, festivals and ceremonies.

There are more than 26,600 ethnic people in the province, including 22,600 Khmer people, accounting for 2.6 per cent of its population.

All communes where there are ethnic people have concrete roads, 98 per cent of all communes have access to national power grids and all health clinics have doctors.

Thạch Dương, head of the provincial Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs, said the province has five communes classified as ethnic minority communes under the Government’s Decision 861 issued last year.

They are Loan Mỹ in Tam Bình District, Đông Thành and Đông Bình in Bình Minh Town, and Tân Mỹ and Trà Côn in Trà Ôn District.

Loan Mỹ and Đông Thành have been recognised as new-style rural communes while Đông Bình has been recognised as an advanced new-style rural commune.

Tân Mỹ and Trà Côn are especially difficult communes.

The province will mobilise resources to develop Tân Mỹ and Trà Côn into new-style rural area communes in 2025, Dương said. – VNS