Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has recently approved an action plan to implement the Strategy for Ethnic Work to 2020, says Vietnam Government Portal.

The action plan includes building programs, policies, schemes and projects to fulfil tasks stated in the strategy, which was approved on March 2013.

The strategy aims to boost production, hunger eradication and poverty reduction.

The action plan covers policies to attract investment, encourage businesses to use ethnic labourers and provide vocational training and job opportunities for these laboueres.

The plan also includes policies on offering land and capital for disadvantaged ethnic minority people to develop household-based production.

The Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA) will devise schemes on building sustainable socio-economic development models in the north west, the central highlands and the south west.

It will devise plans on boosting socio-economic development for ethnic minority people in the Mekong Delta and on allocating forest land for ethnic minority communities as a source of livelihood and protect the environment sustainably.

The Vietnam Women’s Union is asked to develop a program on supporting the construction of vocational training models, promoting traditional vocations and improving incomes for ethnic minority women and submit it to the Government in 2014.

The strategy has set a target of developing socio-economic infrastructure in ethnic minority regions.

It aims to develop fundamental socio-economic infrastructure facilities including transport routes to link with specialised goods production areas, villages and communes, and to connect different regions and provide power on a regular basis while building new rural areas.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is in charge of issuing policies to attract talents to work in ethnic minority regions.

The strategy also looks to improve capacity building of ethnic minority human resources.

Accordingly, ethnic minority students will be trained in an improved network of schools and educational institutions in ethnic minority regions. Polices on supporting ethnic minority students in disadvantaged regions will also be improved.

The Ministry Education and Training will develop five schemes and policies in 2014 on educating ethnic cultural values for ethnic minority students, building a curriculum for ethnic boarding schools, improving Vietnamese language for ethnic minority students, training teachers and educational workers for ethnic minority regions, as well as developing scholarship policies to university ethnic minority students.

The CEMA will develop schemes and policies on supporting socio-economic development of ethnic minority groups, reviewing socio-economic situation in ethnic minority groups and developing specific policies to support socio-economic development in ethnic minority regions in the 2016-2020 period.-VNA