The Central Highlands province of Gia Lai should pay attention to training grassroots-level officials, especially ethnic minority ones, as they directly work with and bring the Party and State’s policies to the people.

Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh gave the instruction while working with the provincial leaders during his two-day working visit from December 11 to inspect the province’s implementation of the 10 th Party Congress resolutions.

The Party leader also asked Gia Lai province to continue speeding up poverty reduction work in order to narrow the gap between rural and urban areas.

“To achieve the sustainable poverty reduction, the province must pay more attention to human resource training for socio-economic development and improve the people’s knowledge,” he said.

He stressed that protecting forests is the most important task of Gia Lai in particular and Central Highlands provinces in general. Therefore, the province must take effective measures to maintain the existing area of forests and study together with ministries and branches mechanisms and policies to attract the people’s participation in afforestation and forest protection, he added.

General Secretary Manh praised the province’s socio-economic achievements over the past four years with basic economic targets exceeding the set plan.

Its average GDP growth rate reached 13.69 percent, up 1.19 percent compared to the set plan, and per-capita income increased from 5.1 million VND in 2005 to 12.5 million VND in 2009. The poverty rate decreased from 29.82 percent in 2005 to 14.32 percent by the end of this year.

The province has focused on preserving and developing cultural values with its successful organisation of the International Gong Festival in November this year. It has also attached importance to defence-security and Party building work.

On the occasion of the 65 th founding anniversary of the Vietnam People’s Army (Dec. 22, 1944-2009), General Secretary Manh visited the Army Corps No. 3 (the Central Highlands Army Corps) and the Central and Central Highlands Police Regiment under the Ministry of Public Security./.