Poverty and injustice block development in Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) - Vietnam remains a poor country, with people in rural areas living on less than a dollar a day, below the poverty level. This stems from an unbalanced development policy, aimed only at material well-being, and ignoring human values and religion, ultimately producing a lack of ideals, which leads to corruption, criminality, prostitution, the spread of AIDS, and in the end, blocks national development itself.
According to information released by the prime minister (No. 170/2005/QĐ – TTg), in the period from 2006-2010, the average income of the rural population was 200,000 VN Dong per month (12.5 dollars); in the urban areas, it was 260,000 VN Dong per month (16.5 dollars); in Ho Chi Minh City, it was 25 dollars. All in all, a truly poor country.
"Poverty here is not only poverty in economic income," Hung, a professor of economics in Ho Chi Minh City, tells AsiaNews, "but also 'bad morality' in living, the 'su bat luong' of parents who sell their young daughters for sexual commercial employment, trafficking their children, marrying off their daughters to rich or middle-class people abroad for money. Poverty also means that children and young people have no chance to go to school; people cannot participate in social services, health care, and social welfare. These social phenomena are leading to injustice in behavior, a lack of basic human rights."
"Our society," says Hiep, master of science in economy, government officer and councilor of economic companies in Ho Chi Minh City, "has no balance in development. We just focus on economic development, but we do not address social and human development. Religions in particular are not allowed to develop freely for ethnic groups in the highlands, in mountainous and poor areas. Meanwhile, religion is moral support for people. Religion is also part of the Vietnamese spirit. In Vietnamese, the term 'human being' is made up of the words 'con' and 'nguoi'. The 'con' part means that we have physical needs such as eating, drinking and sleeping like animals; the other one is 'nguoi', which means that we know how to behave with one another in society with the awareness, goodness, and spirituality for living. If we lose the 'human', we will live like the 'con', animals. This is causing the imbalance in social development and other social issues such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, drug addiction, prostitution, crimes, polluted environment, corruption, abortion among teenagers, and the lack of ideals and initiative to contribute to the nation’s development."
Some studies confirm that in Vietnam, "the causes of poverty and injustice are in outdated agricultural methods and social policies, uneven development between rural and urban areas, and a lack of interest in employment in agricultural areas." In reality, the local authorities are directed by government offices, and do not have the right to permit the development of religion. In this way, the entire country lacks participation on the part of citizens. It produces people who are preoccupied only with money, and accept modern consumerism. It also produces bad leaders, who speculate on public property and take money from the projects of national development. But if we are to abolish poverty, it means that we must build peace and justice in Vietnam.
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19/11/2004
