Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked the Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs to exert more efforts for poverty reduction in ethnic communities during the 2016-20 period. Speaking at a meeting held yesterday to review the committee's 2013 work and commence its 2014 mission, Dung asked the committee to continue programs and policies to reduce poverty. Key tasks for this year included actively assisting with the needs and concerns of ethnic communities, he said. Also, it was essential to find ways to increase investments and improve the living conditions of ethnic people, focusing on providing them with support in housing, electricity, safe water, health care and infrastructure development. Dung stressed the Party and State attached great importance to work relating to ethnic affairs and had mapped out numerous preferential policies in favor of ethnic communities. Thanks to joint efforts, work with ethnic communities has progressed positively, he said, but ethnic people were still faced with difficulties, such as high poverty rates, poor access to health services and undeveloped infrastructure. According to the committee's report, a number of priority policies for ethnic minority groups were put into place in 2013 to help improve the lives of members of these communities. (Vietnam News Feb 16)
