To truly be the "golden population"

(Baonghean) -At the end of 2013, Vietnam welcomed its 90 millionth citizen, becoming the 14th most populous country in the world and the 3rd in Southeast Asia. This is also the period when Vietnam’s population enters the “golden population” period, meaning that for every two people of working age, there is only one person of dependent age. But how to take advantage of this advantage requires many solutions, especially in a province with the 4th largest population in the country like Nghe An…

Women in Ky Son district register for free examination and treatment through the CSSKSR campaign. Photo: Thu Huong

With a population of approximately 3 million people, if compared, Nghe An's population is larger than the population of the entire Northwest region and 10 times larger than the population of Bac Can province. In recent years, Nghe An has promoted this large force, in which in terms of achievements in education alone, Nghe An is always at the top of the country with many students achieving international excellence, national excellence and every year the rate of students passing university and college entrance exams is always high, being one of the provinces with the largest number of professors and doctors in the country. However, in addition to those achievements, due to the low starting point of population, the population in mountainous districts is still quite large, so according to Professor - Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cu - Institute of Population and Social Issues, National Economics University: Although Nghe An's population is large, the quality of the population is not high, currently 42% of the population graduated from primary school or lower, 13.4% of the population received technical training from primary technical level or higher, 67.8% of agricultural, forestry and fishery workers, 7.1% of industrial and construction workers and only 25.1% of service workers. The rate of people without disabilities is low at 88.7%, only higher than Thai Binh: 87.6% and Ha Tinh: 88.5% (while the national average is 92.2%), the average life expectancy of the people is not high.

In addition, the gender imbalance at birth is occurring at a rapid rate. Specifically, in 2006, there were 118 boys/100 girls; in 2008, there were 122 boys/100 girls; in 2009, there were 128 boys/100 girls; and in 2012, there were 116 boys/100 girls. In terms of population distribution, with a density of 117 people/km2 (4 to 5 times higher than the national average), Nghe An is a province with a "small land and large population", the population is mainly distributed in rural areas, agricultural and forestry production areas. The province has also planned to build industrial parks and open economic zones, but has not yet attracted investment sources for construction. Therefore, it has not attracted labor resources in general and coordinated population in particular.

At the same time, Nghe An's population is also facing many challenges: It has not reached the replacement fertility rate and is higher than the national average. If on average there are nearly 60,000 children born each year, according to the forecast of the General Department of Population/Family Planning, it will be until 2025, and at the latest 2029, that Nghe An will reach the replacement fertility rate. It is estimated that at that time, Nghe An's population will reach 4 million people (an increase of 26%), which will cause great pressure, because according to Mr. Nguyen Trung Thanh, Deputy Head of the Department of Population - Family Planning: According to economists' calculations, for every 1% increase in population, a 4% increase in GDP is needed to reach the current standard of living. Meanwhile, our province is still a poor province, the poverty rate is still high, GDP/person is still low. This greatly affects economic development, social security, sustainable development and puts a lot of pressure on education, health care, employment, etc.

In fact, although it has not reached the threshold of 4 million people, our province is currently facing many difficulties due to overpopulation. For example, in education, in the past few years, with the concept of "golden pig", "golden dragon", "silver buffalo" ... the rate of children has increased dramatically and broken the expectation of the scale of schools. Therefore, at the beginning of each school year, parents have to run around to ask for their children to go to school, and every class is overloaded. For example, in Vinh City, the whole city has 30,047 children of preschool age, but currently the number of children attending class (including independent classes) is only 17,884 (accounting for 59.5%).

Or in terms of employment, currently each year our province has more than 30,000 people entering the working age. The labor market is abundant, cheap, and attractive for investment, but job opportunities for workers in the provincial market are still too few, most workers, especially unskilled workers, who want to find a job have to go to big cities. The phenomenon of "brain drain" in the intellectual workforce is still quite common when currently the job opportunities for university graduates in the province are very low, the red carpet has not really attracted high-quality workers due to unreasonable mechanisms and the lack of suitable job arrangements - said Mr. Le Van Thuy, Head of the Department of Labor - Wages - Employment - Social Insurance, (Department of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs).

The above limitations are also the challenges of Nghe An when entering the "golden population" period and putting us in front of difficult problems of how to improve population quality, improve the qualifications of workers and solutions to create more jobs, increase people's income... To implement, in the past time, the Population Sector has simultaneously carried out 5 projects to improve population quality, namely the Project on Controlling Population in Coastal and Coastal Areas (2009 - 2020); Project on Improving Population Quality through Propaganda and Mobilization for Early Detection and Intervention of Diseases in Fetuses and Newborns (2011 - 2015); Project on Intervention to Reduce Gender Imbalance at Birth (2011 - 2015); Project on Pre-Marital Health Examination and Counseling (2011 - 2015); Family and community-based elderly care model (2012 - 2015 period).

Through this, people of all ages in the localities have been gradually consulted, cared for and supported during pregnancy, childbirth, adulthood or old age. At the same time, equipment has been provided so that facilities can be more proactive in examining people's health. In addition, the province has also had many policies to support workers, such as supporting workers in poor districts to work abroad, supporting people whose land has been recovered, and vocational training for rural workers. However, in order for the population to develop stably and truly sustainably, we still have a lot of work to do, including adjusting the birth rate, limiting the rate of third children, limiting the rate of gender imbalance at birth, and extending the golden population period. There will continue to be many policies to pay attention to investing in workers, supporting workers to learn a trade, create jobs for themselves, and export labor...

In training, vocational training activities should be shifted towards the needs of the labor market; training forms should be diversified; there should be policies and mechanisms to encourage enterprises to participate in vocational training activities; and the mechanism for assigning vocational training targets should be innovated by means of training contracts. Creating conditions for workers to improve their professional qualifications and vocational skills. In addition, it is necessary to further strengthen the leadership and direction of Party committees at all levels, the government, and the participation of departments and branches; population should be considered a common task and “an important part of the country’s socio-economic development strategy and a fundamental factor in promoting human resources” in accordance with the spirit of Resolution 4 of the 7th Central Committee…

My Ha