Hanoi Says Rural Unrest Harming Province's Economy

Reuters
02-DEC-97
By Adrian Edwards

HANOI, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Months of rural unrest in a northern province is harming the area's economy and the government is seeking new measures to tackle the problems, an official Vietnamese newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Nhan Dan daily said government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Cong Tan, met in Thai Binh province on Saturday to discuss the situation and decided steps were needed to prevent further economic decline.

It said debt owed by villages and communes in the area now amounted to $16.3 million, revenue from tax collection was declining and 200,000 people were unemployed.

``All representatives considered that the complicated incidents which happened recently have caused difficulties for the economy of Thai Binh province,'' it said.

``The risk of backwardness in Thai Binh is inevitable unless there are effective measures to tackle the problem.''

The newspaper was vague about the measures but said government ministries had been asked to provide money to enable the province to increase export of commodities and to upgrade ports.

``All of these proposals shall be readied in December this year, so that they can be carried out at the beginning of 1998,'' it said.

The troubles in Thai Binh erupted in April when thousands of angry villagers converged on the provincial capital to protest against alleged corruption among local officials.

The situation turned violent in May and June when homes of several government officials were burned down.

Recent reports from the area say the situation remains tense. Twenty-three police officers were held captive by villagers for five days last month after attempting to move into one of the worst-affected districts.

Rural unrest is considered a serious concern for Vietnam's communist government, which has reacted to the problems by dismissing local officials and announcing new policy steps to improve rural incomes.

Delegates at the current National Assembly session have warned of the need for measures to tackle growing wealth disparity between city residents and the rural population.

But there has been no reported mention of either Thai Binh or southern Vietnam's Dong Nai province, where clashes erupted last month between Catholic residents and riot police over what Hanoi said were land ownership grievances.

While state media broke a lengthy silence on the troubles in Thai Binh in September, the problems in Dong Nai have not been reported. The English-language Vietnam News ran an article on Tuesday extolling the virtues of Dong Nai as an investment destination.