Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam called on businesses, individuals and the community to join the Government in enhancing social protection (Photo: vov.vn) Hanoi (VNA) - Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam has called on businesses, individuals and the community to join the Government in enhancing social security.
Dam, who is also head of the National Steering Committee that oversees the implementation of Government Resolution 70/NQ-CP dated 2012 – a Government Action Programme for social security, said on December 20 that mechanisms and policies are needed to better engage non-State resources in social security activities.
He suggested a mechanism in which businesses, individuals and the community could raise funds and manage donations to the poor, those in vulnerable groups like the unemployed, or charity activities.
In June, 2012, for the first time, the Party Central Committee issued a resolution relating to social policies for the period 2012-20. The move affirmed the special attention from the Party and State for the sector for sustainable development in all stages of national growth.
In November 2012, the Government issued Resolution 70/NQ-CP to realise the Party’s resolution.
Resolution 70 assigned the main tasks to ministries, agencies, localities, organisations and individuals, focusing on developing an effective scheme for the search and collection of martyrs’ remains, diversifying forms of social insurance, working on amendments and supplements to the supporting policies for households living near the poverty line, and implementing social security policies for all citizens.
The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) reported that this year, the remains of 1,688 martyrs were collected. Out of 8.8 million revolutionary contributors nationwide, about 1.4 million and their families received monthly aid from the State. Almost 92,000 contributors got housing support.
The Government spent 15 trillion VND (659 million USD) offering monthly aid and free health care insurance cards. About 14 million people including poor people and those from ethnic groups or disadvantaged areas and 1.8 million people from near-poor households received the free health insurance cards.
By this month, about 1.5 million workers were assisted in education and employment.
The number of social insurance participants increased by 13.1 million people, 1.96 percent higher than that of last year. This means 24.19 percent of Vietnam’s labour force join social insurance.
Regarding poverty reduction, 826,000 poor and near-poor households and 21,000 students received preferential loans worth over 27.3 trillion VND (1.2 billion USD).
More than 10,000 families in rural areas and 12,000 poor households in flood-prone areas nationwide were helped to build houses.
By the end of this year, the country expects a poverty rate of less than nine percent, about 1.3 -1.5 percent lower than that of last year. However, poverty rates in remote disadvantaged areas are still high with some localities seeing more than half of their population living under poverty line.
MoLISA Deputy Minister Nguyen Trong Dam said that the country’s unemployment rate remained at 2.34 percent but it saw high rate of college graduates unable to find jobs.
He said that job training activities in rural areas were ineffective because of the modest number of job categories, few applications of new technologies and hi-tech farming.
Attending the meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Dam, other representatives from ministries and agencies complained about the shortage of funding and improper cooperation among State agencies and non-State ones in social security activities.-VNA
VNA
