Thai Hoa Town: Striving to "reach the finish line" of new rural areas

(Baonghean) - In recent years, implementing the National Target Program on New Rural Development (NTM), Thai Hoa Town has achieved very positive results in both the quantity and average rate of criteria achieved by communes. This is an important condition for Thai Hoa Town to confidently reach the finish line of NTM construction according to the roadmap.

On the first day of the year, we returned to Thai Hoa Town - the capital of Phu Quy region. Looking at the bustling and spacious streets with many completed and under-construction infrastructure projects, we can see that the young urban area along the Hieu River is changing day by day. This is not only evident in the central wards but also spreads widely in the outlying communes. Up to now, in 6 communes in the area, determining the construction of new rural areas is a major policy of the Party and the State, an objective requirement, an important condition to strive to turn Thai Hoa into one of the fairly good units of Nghe An province by 2020, with strong economic conditions, synchronous infrastructure; culture, people's spirit developed...

The Party Committee, government and people of the town have had many good and creative ways, taking advantage of external resources and promoting internal resources to join hands in building the new rural area. Therefore, from a low starting point, the commune achieved the highest 9 criteria, an average of 5.16 criteria/commune, Thai Hoa is now full of confidence that it will reach the finish line of building the new rural area in 2016. Because at the end of 2014, Thai Hoa Town had 2 communes, Nghia My and Nghia Thuan, achieving 19/19 criteria; Dong Hieu commune achieved 17/19 criteria; Tay Hieu commune achieved 16/19 criteria, Nghia Hoa commune achieved 15/19 criteria and Nghia Tien commune achieved 12/19 criteria. The average is 16.34 criteria/commune.

Beef cattle farming model of Ms. Truong Thi Thuy, in hamlet 3, Nghia Hoa commune, Thai Hoa town.

Following the spacious asphalt road, we arrived at Nghia Hoa commune, the land of the ancient Vietnamese, famous for the archaeological site of Vac village. Entering the implementation of the National Target Program on New Rural Construction, Nghia Hoa had a low starting point, only achieving 2 criteria. However, with the effective use of investment resources at all levels, as well as the unity, solidarity, and promotion of the people's internal strength, Nghia Hoa has made strong acceleration steps in implementing the criteria. The most obvious is in the field of transportation. Hamlet 1, Nghia Hoa commune has 136 households and 581 people. In the past year, the hamlet successfully mobilized people to donate 2,500m2 of land, 2,200m of solid fence and contributed 1.5 million VND/household to build a 2.8 km long concrete road along with cement supported by the State.

Leading us along the spacious and neat concrete roads, Mr. Le Xuan Hung, the village chief, proudly said: “At first, when mobilizing people to donate land, contribute labor and money to build roads, some people felt hesitant. However, when the Party Committee met and determined that cadres and party members had to be exemplary; organizations such as women, the elderly, and war veterans joined the people's movement, people's awareness changed completely. Besides, we chose to do a pilot project first on a section of road to create a push and compete with each other in the village. Therefore, in just a short time, the internal traffic route of the village was closed with concrete”. Promoting the achieved results, the village continued to mobilize contributions of 500,000 VND/household to upgrade the cultural house; 650,000 VND/household to build a welcome gate. Not only in village 1, in recent years, in Nghia Hoa commune, the combination of State support sources and promoting the internal resources of the locality and the people has been carried out very well. Therefore, the commune's traffic system has met the new rural construction standards with an implementation cost of 61,255 million VND, of which the commune main road is 8.9 km long with a total cost of 42,495 million VND; the village and alley main roads are 18 km long with a total cost of 17,270 million VND...

In addition, Nghia Hoa commune has actively transformed the structure of crops and livestock towards focusing on developing high-value crops such as watermelon, squash, eggplant, pumpkin, corn, grass for dairy cows and maintaining the annual rice and sugarcane production area; building and implementing projects on breeding cows, beef cows and lily growing models. In 2014, Nghia Hoa commune organized 2 training courses on cattle raising with 64 farmers participating. They were then given loans to buy cows and the town fully supported the loan interest in the first year.

Ms. Truong Thi Thuy, hamlet 3, Nghia Hoa commune said: “Through the class, I was guided by the staff on livestock raising techniques and disease prevention for cows, which is very beneficial. In addition, after the class, I was able to borrow 15 million VND without interest in the first year to buy more cows. This is a very good development direction for the family because the young couple has little land for cultivation and lacks capital for production”. In addition to the above programs, Nghia Hoa has also implemented support for households raising goats with 5 or more goats and is carrying out procedures to support the development of orange areas with the initial goal of reaching 8-10 hectares in the commune. With many effective methods, promoting the economic potential of the locality, by the end of 2014, the average income per capita of the commune reached nearly 20 million VND, more than 2 times higher than in 2010 and the poverty rate was only 3.8%.

Mr. Hoang Nghia Thai, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nghia Hoa Commune People's Committee said: "Currently, Nghia Hoa Commune has achieved 15/19 criteria for building a new rural area. We are striving to complete the remaining 4 criteria and achieve the new rural commune standard by 2015. However, the problem is that during the implementation process, many remaining criteria such as building markets, cultural facilities, etc. require large investment capital. Therefore, we hope to continue to receive investment attention and support from all levels so that Nghia Hoa can reach the finish line of building a new rural area."

As for Nghia My commune, the first locality of Thai Hoa town to be recognized as meeting new rural standards. Successful experience shows that, in addition to utilizing external resources, to promote internal strength in the people, the commune has implemented the motto of "selecting weak to stimulate the good". That is, choosing villages and hamlets with the most difficult conditions to mobilize people to join hands in building new rural areas, thereby stimulating the movement in the good hamlets. In that process, cadres and party members are truly the core of the movement. As for Tay Hieu commune, the area has a relatively large area, so from the beginning, the local Party Committee and government identified transportation as a difficult criterion.

Therefore, the entire political system has joined in the campaign to mobilize people to donate land, labor, and funds to build roads. Therefore, the commune has now completed 42/50km of internal roads. Mr. Nguyen Dinh Chau, Chairman of Tay Hieu commune shared: “To achieve the results today, promoting democracy is extremely important. Through that, people know, people discuss, people implement, and join hands to build their homeland. That is also the experience for us to continue to complete the remaining 8km of roads and 3 unachieved criteria, determined to reach the goal of building new rural areas in 2015”.

Thus, it can be seen that, depending on the characteristics, each commune has a way of doing things, steps suitable for its locality to achieve the highest efficiency, aiming towards the common goal of completing the construction of the new rural area. Talking to us, Mr. Phan Thanh Hai, Head of the Economic Department, Deputy Standing Committee, Steering Committee for the construction of the new rural area of ​​Thai Hoa Town said: "Based on the achieved results, in 2015, Thai Hoa Town will focus resources, striving to have 3 communes: Dong Hieu, Tay Hieu and Nghia Hoa complete the construction of the new rural area; and Nghia Tien commune strives to reach the finish line in 2016".

Nhat Le