Yen Thanh joins forces to build a new rural area.

(Baonghean) - As a predominantly agricultural district, Yen Thanh still faces many difficulties in its people's lives, but in recent years, Yen Thanh has led the entire province in the new rural development movement, with 19 out of 38 communes having met the standards. Yen Thanh is striving to achieve the new rural development goal by 2020.

Arriving in Minh Thanh at the right time, we found the residents of Hamlet 2 busy pouring concrete for the hamlet road. Mr. Lang Trong Thanh, Secretary of the Party Branch of Hamlet 2, said that out of more than 2.5km of road in the hamlet, 1.5km has already been completed. To build the concrete road, in addition to the cement provided by the government, each household had to contribute an extra 700,000 VND.

Minh Thanh, a mountainous commune in Yen Thanh district, registered to achieve the New Rural Area (NRA) status in 2017. Currently, the commune has met 17 out of 19 criteria, with two remaining criteria to be completed: transportation and cultural villages. The most challenging aspect is transportation; the commune has 65 km of commune and village roads, of which 25 km have been paved with asphalt or concrete. This means that to complete the transportation criterion, the commune must pave and harden the remaining 40 km of roads. For a commune like Minh Thanh, this is truly a difficult challenge to overcome in order to complete the NRA construction roadmap.

Residents of Minh Thanh commune (Yen Thanh district) are building rural roads. Photo: Thu Huyen.

Mr. Phan Phuc Hao, Secretary of the Party Committee of Minh Thanh commune, said: Regarding cultural villages, currently 7 out of 11 villages have met the criteria, with 4 villages yet to achieve it. However, completing this criterion is not difficult; the biggest obstacle remains transportation. The commune has a large area and a small population, so mobilizing community participation is challenging.

The difficulties faced by Minh Thanh commune are also a common situation in Yen Thanh district. In 2016, the district organized the construction of 80.5km of concrete roads, but to date, 18 communes still have not met the transportation criteria. Mr. Nguyen Van Duong – Head of the District Agriculture Department – ​​said that communes with favorable conditions have already reached the target, while the remaining communes are in the lower tier with difficult economic and social conditions. Mountainous and semi-mountainous communes like Minh Thanh and Dong Thanh… have vast terrain, the lives of the people are still difficult, and mobilization is challenging.

Meanwhile, state support is limited, and later-stage communes face greater difficulties, but the amount of cement provided is the same as that of communes that achieved the goals earlier, making implementation very challenging. This is not to mention the low level of determination among the people and leaders of the communes to build new rural areas. In 2017, only two communes in Yen Thanh district registered to achieve the goals with the province: Minh Thanh and My Thanh. These two communes received cement support from the province, but the other four communes – Trung Thanh, Dong Thanh, Bao Thanh, and Vinh Thanh – registered at the district level and only received cement support after completing the criteria. This means that these communes have to struggle to secure the necessary funding.

Even though Son Thanh commune was the first commune in the province to be recognized as meeting the standards of a new rural area in 2015, and was selected by the Provincial People's Committee as one of the three pilot communes for building a model new rural area in the entire province, it still has three criteria that have not been met: transportation, irrigation, and forms of production organization. To date, Son Thanh commune has achieved 16 out of 19 criteria (according to the set of criteria for model new rural communes). Mr. Phan Van Tuyen - Chairman of the District People's Committee said: The budget for supporting the construction of new rural areas is limited, while the need for building new rural infrastructure is high. The district has a large area, many administrative units, and limited local budget, which has significantly affected the progress of building new rural areas.

Despite facing many difficulties, Yen Thanh district is the leading district in the province in implementing the New Rural Development program. By integrating various funding sources and programs into the implementation, in 2016, the total capital for the program was 370.652 billion VND. Of which: Budget capital was 117.170 billion VND, accounting for 32%; Integrated capital was 28.9 billion VND, accounting for 8%; Other capital was 9.040 billion VND, accounting for 2%; and capital mobilized from community contributions was 215.747 billion VND, accounting for 58%.

For example, in Minh Thanh commune, despite facing many difficulties, the commune has sought all possible sources of funding from the province to the district, allocated funds from the commune budget, and mobilized the commune's successful residents to invest in modern and clean infrastructure; building a health station with a total investment of over 5 billion VND (of which 4.5 billion VND came from the province and over 500 million VND from the commune budget). Currently, in addition to striving to complete the criteria for transportation and cultural villages, the commune is also consolidating other criteria.

Graphics: Huu Quan

“In 2017, we strived to have 6 more communes achieve the New Rural Area standard: Minh Thanh, My Thanh, Trung Thanh, Dong Thanh, Bao Thanh, and Vinh Thanh, bringing the total number of communes meeting the New Rural Area standard to 25 out of 38 communes. We aim for each commune that has not yet reached the target to increase by 1-2 criteria, ensuring no commune falls below 9 criteria. We will continue to direct and develop Son Thanh commune to accelerate the progress of building a model New Rural Area. We will promote the development of production models to increase people's income and replicate models with high economic efficiency. Yen Thanh is striving to achieve the New Rural Area standard by 2020." - Mr. Phan Van Tuyen – Chairman of the People's Committee of Yen Thanh District shared.

To achieve the set goals, Yen Thanh will continue to direct efforts to improve the quantity and quality of criteria in the coming period. For communes that have already met the new rural development standards, the focus will be on reviewing and improving the quality of new rural development in a sustainable and modern direction, according to the new set of criteria, aiming towards building model new rural communes. Communes that have already met the standards but have criteria that do not meet the new set of criteria must supplement and complete them in 2017. Emphasis will be placed on resolving outstanding debts and preventing the accumulation of further construction debt; no projects will be approved or invested in until the funding source is secured.

Specifically for communes registered to achieve new rural standards in 2017, a review and assessment of each criterion's content will be conducted. Based on this, a specific implementation plan for each content will be developed, integrating it with the mobilization of resources from the people for implementation; at the same time, the quality of the achieved criteria will be improved to ensure consistent and sustainable results.

Thu Huyen