Dien Hai (Dien Chau): Proactive and creative in building new rural areas

DETERMINING THE RIGHT SPINE

Located in the northeast of Dien Chau district, Dien Hai has a natural land area of ​​over 520 hectares, with a length of 2.7 km along the sea. The population is distributed in 6 hamlets with 2,043 households and 9,113 people. Before starting to build a new rural area, Dien Hai was a coastal commune with special difficulties such as being far from the district center and having inadequate infrastructure. Not only that, the commune is often threatened by storms and floods every year, the educational level of the people is low, and the people's lives are still difficult... Therefore, striving to escape poverty, escape from a particularly difficult commune, and strive to achieve 19 criteria for building a new rural area is a difficult journey for Dien Hai.

Spacious headquarters of Dien Hai commune. Photo: Quang An

Leaders of the Party Committee and the government of Dien Hai commune have focused their intelligence on building a new rural project for the locality. Photo: Quang An

Faced with the above difficulties, after many meetings, the Party Executive Committee of the commune issued a thematic resolution for the leaders, the government, the Fatherland Front, sectors and levels to develop a plan to implement the roadmap for building a new rural commune. First of all, it is necessary to focus on propagating and thoroughly disseminating to Party members and people the policies and guidelines for building a new rural area. A project for building a new rural area was born in the spirit of collective intelligence with the highest determination.

Economic development is a prerequisite in building new rural areas, therefore, based on the local economic project, Dien Hai has determined to focus on directing 5 key economic spearheads. These are restructuring, introducing new breeds and new animals into production and breeding; commodity-oriented production; developing services, especially Hon Cau tourist service area; mobilizing people to stay at sea, build ships to exploit and catch seafood and promote labor export.

High-tech agricultural model in Dien Hai commune (Dien Chau). Photo: Quang An

Thanks to specific orientation and drastic solutions, Dien Hai has so far built a 15-hectare model field with a yield of over 300 million VND/ha/year, 5 high-tech greenhouse models with a yield of 80 million VND/crop/model; a medicinal Solanum procumbens model; 9 small farms and dozens of hectares of high-quality rice. The commune has built a central market, developed the Hon Cau tourist service area and more than 450 kiosks and small and medium-sized agents in the area, creating a vibrant trading network throughout the commune.

Along with service development, Dien Hai peoplehas actively stuck to the sea to build boats to exploit and catch seafood. From more than 200 rafts in 2012, up to now the commune has 350 rafts and 7 large capacity ships worth from 1 to 1.2 billion VND each.

In addition to developing the marine economy, along with many localities in the district, Dien Hai determined that labor export will also be a good direction. In this field, the locality directly coordinates with reputable export companies, mainly in the Japanese and Korean markets, and at the same time links with credit funds and banks so that workers can borrow money in installments when participating in labor export. In 2019, the commune had 285 labor export workers, mainly in the Japanese market with an average income of 30 million VND/person/month.

The internal roads of the commune are invested in a systematic manner, convenient for the people. Modern high-rise buildings are appearing more and more in Dien Hai commune. Photo: Quang An

In the field of investment attraction and basic construction, Dien Hai focuses on meeting and calling for investors, creating open mechanisms and undertaking site clearance to create the most favorable conditions for investors, while promoting internal capital resources and gaining support from superiors.

As a result, from 2012 to present, the total investment capital for infrastructure construction is about 300 billion VND, of which the budget and people's contribution is about 180 billion VND, the rest is capital from superiors and investors. In particular, from 2015 to present, 22 key projects worth 130 billion VND have been invested in construction. Thanks to that, up to now, the infrastructure of the commune such as roads, schools, medical stations, offices, cultural facilities, communal cultural houses, stadiums, cultural houses of hamlets have been newly built, spacious, clean and up to standards. The commune's budget revenue in 2012 was 5 billion 676 million VND, in 2019 it reached 16 billion 640 million VND, an increase of more than 10 billion VND.

All three levels of education in Dien Hai are of the top quality in Dien Chau district. Photo: Quang An

Along with economic development, Dien Hai is interested in directing cultural development. Up to now, 8/10 hamlets, 4 units, 15 clans have been recognized as cultural titles, 85% of cultural families, 45% of sports families, the People's Committee of the commune has achieved the title of cultural agency, the commune has the title of cultural and sports institution, the cultural, artistic and sports movements have been strongly developed. In 2018, Dien Hai won the first prize in the district when participating in the 8th Sports Festival of Dien Chau district.

In 2020, the "Multi-purpose Water Wheel" project of Dien Hai Secondary School was awarded First Prize at the National Youth, Adolescent and Children's Creativity Contest. Photo: Quang An - My Ha

In terms of education, in 2012, the commune was at the bottom of the district, but now all 3 schools have enough standard high-rise classrooms, the teaching and learning quality of the 3 schools in the top of the district. In particular, Dien Hai Secondary School is the only school in the whole province that has continuously had projects that have won national prizes in creative and scientific research competitions for many years. In 2020, the school's "Multi-purpose Water Wheel" project was awarded First Prize at the National Creative Competition for Youth, Adolescents and Children. This is also the first project of Nghe An students to win First Prize in this competition.

Implementing sustainable poverty reduction policies in the locality, all poor and near-poor households have access to preferential loans and economic development support programs of the State, creating jobs for workers. Up to now, the poverty rate is 1.22%, near-poor households are 3.43%. Average income per capita in 2019 is 42,823 million VND/person/year.

In recent years, the grassroots political system has been built, consolidated and stabilized in terms of organizational structure in accordance with current regulations. In 2019, the administrative procedure reform work of Dien Hai commune was ranked first in the district by the district, the government was excellent, the Fatherland Front, the Veterans Association, the Communist Youth Union were ranked as outstanding, the Party Committee of the commune was recognized as a strong and clean Party Committee. With the above achievements, Dien Hai was recognized by the People's Committee of Nghe An province as a new rural commune, reaching the target 1 year ahead of the plan assigned by the district.

Dien Hai Commune Health Station. Photo: Quang An

FOUR LESSONS LEARNED

The process of building new rural areas in Dien Hai shows 4 experiences. First, building a new countryside is a major program that has a direct impact on all areas of people's cultural and social life. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out propaganda, mobilization and explanation work well so that all people clearly understand the goal of building a new countryside is to develop the economy, culture and society in a sustainable direction, associated with environmental protection, improving people's income and life, people are the main subjects of building a new countryside, people know everything, people discuss, people do, people enjoy, so that people trust and actively and voluntarily participate. Second, The Party Committee and the People's Committee of the commune must proactively implement, develop plans and specific implementation roadmaps for each stage. The steps must be calculated scientifically, on the basis of suitability with the actual conditions of the locality. At the same time, do well the work of democracy, transparency, people know, people discuss, people do, people inspect and supervise.

The market area in the new commune has been built spaciously. Photo: Quang An

Third, building a new rural area must be based on inheriting, promoting and sustainably developing the achieved criteria, supplementing, upgrading and improving to perfect the nearly achieved criteria and focusing on directing the difficult to achieve criteria. Strongly implementing socialization to mobilize resources.Fourth, it is necessary to identify the construction of the new rural area as the responsibility of the entire political system, in which the leadership role of the Party Committee, the management and operation of the government, the coordination of propaganda and mobilization of the Vietnam Fatherland Front and socio-political organizations must be promoted; the spirit of setting an example and responsibility of Party members and cadres must be encouraged; the spirit of self-reliance, self-reliance, proactiveness and positivity of the people must be aroused; and unity must be created to jointly implement the construction of the new rural area./.

Phan Van Thuyen