Vietnam arUnable to Solve Land Shortage to 2M Ethnic Minorities: Lawmakers

Vietnam almost failed to solve the rampant shortage of residential land and farmland to roughly two million ethnic inhabitants across the country, local lawmakers said at a meeting of the National Assembly (NA)’s Steering Committee on Sep 13. Many localities nationwide, mostly those in mountainous areas in the northwestern provinces of Cao Bang and Ha Giang have no available land to allocate to local residents, Ksor Phuoc, chairman of NA’s Ethnic Council, said at a report released at the meeting. The Mekong delta has a large area of land available but under ownership, he added, noting that it would take the state a lot of money to have the land back before giving it to local residents. In addition, a vast area of land remains unused in several localities, but it will be costly to improve the wild or impoverished soil, Phuoc said. Other localities, meanwhile, are unable to afford the high compensations to take the land back to hand over to inhabitants from owners, he said in the report. Worse still, there have appeared groups of well-off people hiring land from poor inhabitants to serve their realty or profitable projects, meaning that the actual owners have to work for others in their own land lots, said Giang Seo Phu, chairman of the Government’s Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs. To solve the situation, Phung Quoc Hien, chairman of the National Assembly’s Finance and Budget Committee, said that the country should tighten control over allocating land to state-owned forestry enterprises, noting that those businesses are holding up to four million hectares of land. Other lawmakers suggested that the state should issue preferential policies to help local ethnic minorities settle their lives without strong dependence on land after Ksor Phuoc affirmed that land issues would be a long-term and unsolvable problem in the communist country. Land-related issues commonly top agendas of the NA’s meetings as up to 70% of the country’s total petitions relating to land disputes between authorities and residents.
The disputes become thorny with group petitions, one of issues causing social disorder and prestigious reduction for Vietnam when authorities-backed investors take land of farmers at low compensations to build luxurious realty projects for huge profits, local experts said. (VietNamNet Sept 13)