Criteria for new-styled rural communes in 2016-20 announced

Hanoi (VNA) – The Prime Minister has issued a set of criteria for a new-style rural commune in the 2016-2020 period, covering 19 different fields with specific targets in planning, socio-economic infrastructure, economy and production, as well as culture, society and environment.

General and specific targets in each criterion are designed to suit particular regions: northern midland and mountainous, Red River delta, northern central, south central coastal, Central Highlands, south eastern and Mekong Delta regions.

The socio-economic infrastructure group comprises eight specific criteria for transportation, irrigation, electricity, school, cultural infrastructure, rural trade infrastructure, information and communications, and residential housing.

The economic and production organisation group includes four criteria on income, poor households, employed labourers, and production organisation, while the socio-cultural and environment group aims at objectives in education and training, health care, culture, environment and food safety, political system and law access, and defence and security.

A new-style rural commune must have asphalt or concrete roads to the district downtown allowing cars to travel in all seasons. Per-capita income of locals is at between 36-50 million VND depending on each region while the poor household rate is at 6 percent under the multidimensional poverty line.

The environment and food safety criteria will look to the rate of households accessing clean water, the proportion of production and business facilities observing environmental protection regulations, as well as the ratio of sanitary bathrooms, toilets and water containers, and the number of food production facilities meeting food safety rules.

The recognised communes should also have pure and strong Party organisations and authorities, as well as locals’ good access to legal regulations, no domestic violation and adequate support to vulnerable people.

Relevant ministries and agencies are tasked to issue instructions guiding the implementation of the criteria.

The PM also asked the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to summarise the guidance to issue a handbook and deliver it to localities. The Ministry is hoped to make advices on advanced criteria for communes that have already been recognised as a new-styled rural area.

The PM’s decision, which will be effective from December 1, 2016, will replace the Decision 491/QD-TTg dated April 16, 2009 and Decision 342/QD-TTg on February 20, 2013 on amendments to a number of criteria on the national standards of new-styled rural areas.-VNA