A resettlement program reserved for nomadic ethnic minority people has been carried out too slowly and needs to gather all the available resources to accomplish all of its goals by 2012, a supervising agency has said. The Nationality Council under the National Assembly held a conference to review the introduction of resettlement policies for ethnic minority households still engaging in nomadic lifestyle and farming, in Hanoi on September 8. The council reported that since its launch in 2007, the program has helped over 1,000 ethnic minority households to switch to sedentary life and farming, representing only 3.5 percent of the original target 29,700 households, by the end of 2009. The relevant State agencies and local authorities carried out just 126 out of the 297 settlement projects over the 2007-2009 period. The council pointed to unmatched planning, inaccurate reports on the program’s beneficiaries and a very slow disbursement of government funding as main reasons behind the situation. When speaking at the conference, the Chairman of the Nationality Council Ksor Phuoc, said that the Party and State’s resettlement policy was aimed at helping nomadic ethnic minorities to settle down and develop household-based economies to improve their living conditions.
He also stated that the policy has met the people’s aspirations and the needs of various localities. To help all nomadic ethnic minority households to resettle by 2012 as planned, the council has asked the National Assembly to speed up its resettlement policies and programs. The ministries, sectors and targeted localities need to revise and readjust their resettlement projects to adapt them to the current situation as well as publicize the State’s assistance policies to help beneficiaries relocate. More than VND2.7 trillion has been allocated for the resettlement program and the initial outcomes will be reported to the National Assembly at its eighth meeting this October. (www.vietnamplus.vn [1] Sept 8)
