Nghia Minh (Nghia Dan): Consensus, high determination to reach the NTM finish line

(Baonghean) -Nghia Minh Commune is located about 20 km north of Nghia Dan District center. With the advantage of National Highway 15A and Provincial Road 598 passing through, Nghia Minh has many advantages in connecting, exchanging, and developing the economy with communes in Nghia Dan District and Thai Hoa Town.

Besides, Nghia Minh has a population of over 3,700 people (of which 36% are ethnic minorities), a natural land area of ​​1,250 hectares (of which agricultural land accounts for nearly half of the area), so it has potential for developing agricultural economy and rural industries and services...

Orange growing model of people in hamlet 9, Nghia Minh commune (Nghia Dan).

Implementing the National Target Program on New Rural Development (NTM), Nghia Minh commune encountered many difficulties due to its low starting point in economic infrastructure. Therefore, when first implementing this program (in 2011), the Party Committee and the government of Nghia Minh commune set a target of reaching the finish line by 2020. Secretary of the Commune Party Committee Cao Thanh Tung said: "Although the roadmap was set out like that, during the implementation process, the commune received attention and active support from all levels, sectors and people. Therefore, after reviewing, the Executive Committee of the Commune Party Committee discussed and adjusted the target to reach the finish line sooner."

To achieve the adjustment goal, with the motto "people are both implementers and beneficiaries", the commune has mobilized the entire political system to take drastic action. Along with propaganda to create consensus, thereby gaining the support of the people, the commune calculated and concentrated its efforts to have a suitable implementation roadmap. Strong movements began in 2013, then accelerated in 2015 to reach the finish line. Up to now, after 5 years of integration and focused investment, Nghia Minh has completed the set goal and was recognized as reaching the finish line in May 2016.

Being a purely agricultural commune, not long ago, 6/8 hamlets of the commune were in a particularly difficult situation and at the time of starting to build the new rural area, only 6/19 criteria were met, so achieving the new rural standard at this time was a very remarkable result. Currently, not only is the technical infrastructure being invested in fundamentally, the rural appearance is gradually changing, but the factors and conditions to improve the income and living standards of people in Nghia Minh are becoming clear.

To develop the irrigation system, the commune has invested nearly 40 billion VND to asphalt and solidify over 18 km of roads and essential irrigation works in the area. Although the commune has the advantage of receiving a large investment from integrated projects, this is the first time the commune has mobilized a large amount of money (nearly 9 billion VND) to build rural infrastructure. Mr. Truong Ngoc Duc - head of hamlet 1 said: hamlet 1 is nearly 3 km away from the commune center, has 135 households/642 people, of which 70% are Tho ethnic people, people's lives are not very well off, at the beginning of the campaign, I also felt apprehensive.

However, through mobilization, people saw this as an opportunity for the hamlet to have concrete roads, making travel more convenient, so everyone unanimously tried. Thanks to that, in addition to contributing 746,000 VND/person, people in the hamlet also spent 1,600 labors to rebuild 2.2 km of road. Next, hamlets 1 and 5, hamlets 4, 7 and 9 also actively participated, within just 4 months, the commune received nearly 2,000 tons of cement to build over 18 km of concrete road.

Concreting rural roads in Nghia Minh commune. Photo archive

Along with investing in upgrading technical infrastructure, the commune has also actively reviewed and strengthened criteria for cultural, educational and medical institutions. Within 5 years, the commune has invested over 22 billion VND to upgrade classrooms, cultural houses in hamlets, medical stations and build and complete cultural institutions in the commune center. Thanks to that, up to now, in addition to the secondary school (shared with Nghia Hong commune) which has received a relatively large investment to ensure teaching and learning conditions, 2/2 schools and medical stations of the commune have met national standards quite early; cultural institutions in the commune center have been invested to be spacious, clean and beautiful.

With a deep understanding of the purpose of building a new rural area, the core is to improve people's lives, create stable jobs for people to have income. Therefore, along with organizing many training sessions, visiting and learning about models of tree and animal production in neighboring communes and localities with similar conditions, the commune has mechanisms to encourage people to exploit land advantages, apply scientific advances in production; actively borrow capital from credit programs supporting agriculture, rural areas and hunger eradication and poverty reduction to develop the economy and production models. Although it is an agricultural commune and the exchange of goods is still modest, the outstanding loan balance for economic development has changed positively.

In addition to the outstanding loans for poverty reduction of more than 5 billion VND per year, hundreds of business households in the area have borrowed tens of billions of VND to develop production. In parallel with the restoration and development of molasses production (the commune is building to become a traditional craft village), promoting the construction mechanical profession, the commune has implemented models of seedling production, exploiting the strengths of the land such as sugarcane and other citrus crops such as lemon, tangerine, PQ grapefruit; raising livestock in a concentrated direction...

With the above exciting changes, in just the past 5 years, the average income of Nghia Minh residents has increased from 12 million VND to nearly 19 million VND/person; the poverty rate has also decreased from 26% to 6.1%; the commune no longer has temporary and dilapidated houses; 84% of residential houses meet the "3 hard" criteria as prescribed.

Mr. Vu Anh Tuan - Chairman of Nghia Minh Commune People's Committee shared: One of the major challenges of building new rural areas in Nghia Minh is creating jobs and increasing income for people. Recently, thanks to participating in training courses, learning models and the efforts of the people, the first promising models of trees and animals have appeared in the area.

Nghia Minh has land advantages and in the past time, the commune has done a good job of propagating and mobilizing people through study tours, training, transferring science and technology, knowledge of taking care of seedlings... However, in order for people to boldly invest capital in large-scale production, it is necessary to have the participation and support of the State, scientists and businesses so that people can feel secure in investing and producing on a large scale; at the same time, effectively exploiting the strengths of land, creating jobs and continuing to increase income for people./.

Nguyen Hai