Labor reforms to boost living standards in rural areas
06/08/2010 - 21 Lượt xem
The project will focus on reforming the labor structure in rural areas, Phat said in a recent interview.
The government plans to increase the number of people working in non-agricultural jobs by setting up urban and industrial areas.
The new developments mean rural people will not have to go to cities to seek work.
Under the plan, the number of agricultural workers will be reduced but those remaining in the sector would receive assistance in improving their education, skills and work practices to become “modern farmers”, Phat said.
The ministry had also set up a task-force to examine how the country’s agriculture sector can best adapt to climate change.
A ministry report, released at a conference in Hanoi last week, said Vietnam was highly vulnerable to climate change, with rising sea levels to inundate massive areas of the country.
More than 70 percent of Vietnam’s 86 million population work in the sec-tor but agricultural production made up just over 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product last year, official statistics showed.
In the same period, exports of agricultural product rose 9.2 percent year-on-year, earning US$12.5 billion.
No rice shortage
Vietnam is the world’s second largest rice exporter.
However some citizens, especially in highland areas, lack rice, a staple food in the Vietnamese diet.
Phat told Thanh Nien that in high-land areas where farmers grew corn because rice production was too difficult, the government and local authorities were supporting farmers by providing a new corn variety, training and cattle-breeding aids.
The assistance was designed to boost their income so they could afford to buy rice, he said.
In some mountainous provinces, such as Cao Bang and Ha Giang, where the soil and climate did not facilitate corn-growing, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung had developed a plan to give local people rice in exchange for planting and protecting forests.
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