Improve the 'hard' criteria, maintain the 'soft' criteria.

(Baonghean) - The acceleration of the new rural development program has positively impacted all aspects of people's lives in rural areas. While "hard" criteria such as transportation, irrigation, and electricity are supported by the State with investment capital, combined with contributions from the people to create stability and play a foundational role in development, maintaining "soft" criteria such as security, environment, employment, and income requires even more effort.

Residents of Hung Tien commune (Hung Nguyen district) bring their waste to the commune's waste collection point for processing. Photo: Xuan Hoang.

During the process of directing the New Rural Development program, Mr. Nguyen Van Tue - Chairman of the People's Committee of Quynh Luong commune (Quynh Luu district) - realized that achieving the criteria was difficult, but maintaining those criteria after achieving the New Rural Development standard was even more challenging, especially the "soft" criteria. For example, regarding the security and order criterion, in 2015, a murder occurred in the commune, leading to the commune failing to meet this criterion that year.

Regarding cultural criteria, the practice of having a third child or more still persists in some villages, and ensuring sustainability is difficult.

After achieving the New Rural Area standard two years ago, Thanh Linh commune (Thanh Chuong district) is focusing on building high-quality "soft" criteria. Accordingly, the movement to build culturally exemplary families and villages has been entrusted to the Women's Union of the commune. With the active participation of the women, waste on inter-commune and inter-village roads is collected and cleaned monthly. Each branch of the Women's Union is responsible for a section of road, thus ensuring that the roads in Thanh Linh commune are always clean and maintain general environmental hygiene.

In addition, families have built pits for collecting household waste, and all waste is collected and transported to the village/commune's designated collection point for processing. Thanks to consistent and continuous awareness campaigns, Thanh Linh commune has consistently maintained its "soft" criteria (environmental indicators). It is one of the exemplary communes in implementing the construction of a clean and beautiful rural environment.

Cattle farming in confinement is a solution to increase income for people in Trang Son commune, Do Luong district. Photo: Xuan Hoang

According to Mr. Nguyen Van Hung, Deputy Head of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of Thanh Chuong District, generally speaking, at this point, all communes that have achieved the New Rural Area standard have not had any "soft" criteria dropped compared to the time they were recognized as achieving the New Rural Area standard. To achieve this, the District People's Committee has implemented many solutions: Regularly strengthening the dissemination and promotion of the Program's contents from the district to the grassroots level, so that all levels of the population understand and the entire political system participates.

The examples above reflect the continuous efforts of communes that have achieved the New Rural Area (NRA) status. However, through discussions, many localities that have completed the NRA program acknowledge that they are facing significant challenges in maintaining the achieved criteria, especially the "soft" criteria such as culture, security and order, and the environment. Through discussions, many commune leaders believe that to overcome these difficulties, each local official and Party member must constantly stay close to the grassroots and the dynamism of the people is needed.

Besides promoting economic development, localities need to focus on consolidating and building self-governing groups and neighborhood watch groups, and replicating successful models of security and order; organizing campaigns to clean up the environment, village roads, and alleys, while simultaneously enhancing solidarity within the community.

Mr. Hoang Nghia Hieu, Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and Chief of the Office of the National Target Program for Building New Rural Areas in the province, stated that: In order to maintain and gradually raise the "soft" criteria in new rural areas to a new level, localities must identify this as a regular and continuous priority task, considering it a key task for the year.

To achieve that goal, local authorities must develop specific plans for each area, most importantly by strengthening propaganda efforts. When people's awareness is raised, the "soft" criteria will be maintained. In the process of building new rural areas, the "hard" criteria (physical facilities, infrastructure, etc.) are the basis of development, while the "soft" criteria are considered the long-term foundation; therefore, localities need to pay attention to them regularly and continuously.

"Parishioners in Nghe An expose the moral decay of Father Nguyen Dinh Thuc."

Xuan Hoang