Allowance for poor for upcoming Tet

The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has announced a plan to offer each poor household in the city VND850,000 (US$39.8) as an allowance on the occasion of the upcoming Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, which will fall on February 19.

>> Highest Tet bonus in HCMC is $21,400
The Vietnamese southern hub currently has 29,106 poor households. Under the current poverty threshold, a resident is considered poor if his or her income is less than VND16 million ($749) per year.
In addition to poor households, elderly people who are at least 80 years old and people who regularly receive social welfare will also enjoy an allowance of VND850,000 per person.
War invalids, sick soldiers, revolutionary senior officials, women with the title of “Vietnamese Heroic Mother”, and some other subjects will be given support ranging from VND960,000 ($45) to VND2.5 million ($117).
Meanwhile, civil servants at State administrative agencies in the city and employees at the SOS Village in Go Vap District will be given VND1.2 million ($56.2) per person, according to the plan.
Financial support for all the above groups for Tet is higher than last year, according to the People’s Committee

Many people want to be recognized as poor

Many people want to be recognized as poor, NA deputies

June 6, 2012

LookAtVietnam – People only want to be certified as ‘poor households’ because they are given houses, free hospital coverage and do not have to pay power charges, said deputy Nguyen Ngoc Phuong at the National Assembly (NA) yesterday, June 5.

In the morning of June 5, the NA discussed the implementation of the policy and law on public investment in agriculture, farmers and the rural area. After five years, public investment in these sectors is assessed to ‘attain achievement, contributing to change the face of the countryside towards modernization and poverty reduction.”
However, the National Assembly Standing Committee’s report and NA deputies also pointed out a lot of weaknesses of this policy.
One of the important criteria of public investment in agriculture and rural development that attracted the interest of deputies is poverty reduction task.
In 2011, the ratio of poor households in the countryside was 9.45 percent, a fall of 12 percent compared to 2006. The poor have had better approach to policies and assistance of the state and the community. Essential demands have been basically satisfied, such as housing, clean water, medical examination and studies.
However, Chairman of the NA Committee for Economic Affairs, Mr. Nguyen Van Giau, said that this task is unsustainable and the threat of poverty and becoming poor again is high.
Giau said that many provinces have high rates of poor households, especially northern mountainous provinces. In these localities, over 30 to nearly 50 percent of families are rated as poor. In addition, the gap of income and living standards between the urban and the rural areas is widening, which is 20-30 times.
Deputy Bui Manh Hung said that some localities do not want to be recognized as overcoming the threshold of poverty.
“It sounds weird but it is the truth, because they are actually poor and the people do not want to make an unreal achievement,” Hung added.
Hung also said that some locations set their own poverty thresholds, which are higher than the national standards, resulting in inequality in implementing the state’s policies.
Deputy Nguyen Ngoc Phuong mentioned the fact that many people only want to be certified as poor people and they do not try to escape poverty. Phuong explained that poor people who do not have houses are granted houses. If they do not have sufficient food, they are supplied with food. If they are sick, they do not have to pay hospital fees and they do not have to pay power charges.
Phuong cited an example in the central province of Quang Binh, where households that are rated as being close to the poverty threshold have to turn off electric lights to save on electricity while those that are rated as poor do not.
“Therefore, being rated as poor households is very attractive so that even some hamlet and commune officials also ask for the poverty certificate,” deputy Phuong said.

Mai Lan

Paralytic girl writes poetry by mouth | Look At Vietnam

Paralytic girl writes poetry by mouth

May 5, 2012

LookAtVietnam – In a small house in Tam Duong district of Vinh Phuc Province, a girl is passionately fond of writing by a pen in her mouth. That girl is Nguyen Thi Hong.

Hong’s mother, Ms. Tran Thi Man, said that Hong was born normally like other babies but the more she grew, the more her limbs were contracted.
Her parents brought the child to many hospitals and herbalists, but doctors could not cure the disease. The poor family got poorer.
Their main food was rice mixed with cassava. Man’s fifth child died after being poisoned by cassava. Her husband died after that. Her eldest daughter named Van left family at the age of 14, to work to help her family. Letters were the means of communications between Van and her family.

Hong, who is paralytic, loved Van very much. She saved every dong to buy papers and stamps to write to her sister. At first, she asked others to write for her but after a time, she was afraid of disturbing you. Hong decided to practice writing.
For Hong, learning reading and particularly writing was very hard. It was difficult to keep a pen by mouth. It was much more difficult to write. But the girl could do that tough task after over a year.
At present, Hong can not only write but also write poet and draw paintings by her mouth. She can also thread a needle and sew by her mouth.
The girl has a great passion for literature. That passion was lighted up after a friend read a poem for her. The poem was like a story about Hong’s life. Since then, Hong has written poems. She wrote day and night, like tomorrow will never come again. Every feeling was written out.
Hong’s friend, named Thoa, said: “I did not like poems but one day when I went to see Hong, I saw she was writing something. I was curious and asked her to let me read it. The more I read, the more I liked her poem. I could not imagine that my friend could write such a great and sensational poem.”

Hong has written nearly 400 poems and some of them were posted on newspapers. She desires to print a collection of poems, but this is a dream because she receives social welfares of VND500,000 ($25) a month, which is not enough for food and medicines.
Hong’s biggest wish is saving money to tile the yard of her house to enable her old mother to walk easily.
Hong currently lives with her mother. Her sisters and brothers have had their own families. They are poor so they can help Hong and her mother.
Le Ha

Turns down $50,000 to donate kidney to poor girl

Samaritan turns down $50,000 to donate kidney to a poor girl 

January 10, 2011  about Sci-Tech

Vu Quoc Tuan at the 8th national patriot festival in Hanoi.

Vu Quoc Tuan has not had an easy life himself, but is firmly in the business of saving lives -  and expects no reward in return.
His incredible humanity has seen him donate a kidney to a poor girl for free, refusing an offer of US$50,000 made by a better-off family.
Tuan’s story came to light when the 38-year-old native of Phu Tho was honoured at the 8th National Patriots Festival held in Hanoi  on Monday (December 27).
He was working as a guard at the Hanoi Children’s Hospital when Tuan was moved on seeing Ta Thi Thu Ha, 18, the same age as his daughter, struggling with kidney failure. It was the year 2008 and Ha had been suffering for at least six years then.
Learning that the family was poor, with the father a war invalid and the mother the sole breadwinner working as a vendor, he decided to give the girl one of his own kidneys.
When he started to undergo examinations in March 2008 to prepare for the surgery, a family from nearby Hai Phong visited him and offered to pay $50,000 for the kidney, but Tuan told them he had to give it to a niece.
“You have money, so you can find [the kidney] at many places, but if I don’t give the kidney to my niece, she will die,” Tuan said.
Tuan was born to a poor farming family and quit college after one month to take care of his family after his father died of sickness. He said he has been working different jobs around the northern region, thus has a special sympathy for poor people.
Doctors at the hospital were surprised by his decision to donate. No one that they know of had ever donated a kidney to a total stranger.
The donation was made after more than 60 tests were done between March and October 2008, during which time Tuan had to undergo the pain of needles several times, including into his spinal cord.
He had to borrow money to raise his children during the period as the examinations kept him too busy to go to work. His wife, a guest worker in Malaysia, was also struggling there because of the global economic crisis.
The transplant was successful but Tuan didn’t accept a single dong from Ha’s family, though they wished to give him some to help his recovery.
He now has a desk job at the Mechanics Company No.17 under the Ministry of Defense. The company director, Chu The Thinh, offered him the job after the surgery weakened him and he could no longer afford to do hard labor.
Not the first time
Tuan’s job as a guard at the Children’s Hospital was also the result of his second nature - helping others in trouble.
In 2007, he saved a child from two fighting buffalos on the street and was hospitalized with rib fractures.
At the hospital, Tuan offered to donate blood to a girl who needed an emergency operation. The hospital was short of blood, and Tuan, being a universal donor (O group), gladly donated his. The girl’s family found out where he lived and tried to pay him, but he refused. So they helped him get the position.
When working as a hospital guard, Tuan has been known for helping patients’ relatives look for rental homes.
Earlier, when working at construction sites, Tuan had several times carried pregnant women to the hospital for delivery.
And when he was a xe om driver, he often transported poor people for free.
“Every time I see a person in need of help, I just think that if I don’t do anything, they will die. I myself am unhappy, so I understand their situation,” Tuan said.

Source: Thanh Nien 

Forced evictions leave thousands homeless in Cambodia, says UN expert

The forced evictions of tens of thousands of Cambodia’s poor constitute a “grave breach” of human rights, a United Nations independent expert said today, calling for damages to be paid for lost homes and the provision of alternative housing.
In the middle of the night last week, over 130 families were forced to leave their homes without prior notice in the capital, Phnom Penh, so that a private company could redevelop the site. The shelters in the poor community were destroyed, and there have been reports that before the eviction, the community suffered intimidation and that the area’s representatives were subject to criminal charges.
“It is regrettable that the ongoing negotiations with residents were abandoned, casting aside a valuable opportunity to reach a just and lawful solution to this longstanding dispute,” said Raquel Rolnik, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, in a statement. “It is now of utmost importance that the rights of the residents to fair compensation for their lost homes and property and the provision of adequate alternative housing are fully respected.”
She noted that last week’s evictions in Phnom Penh are not isolated, but are “[alarmingly]” on the rise, with tens of thousands of people losing their homes and becoming even more destitute.
In the South-East Asian nation, the expert said, there has been a “consistent pattern” of rights violations tied to forced evictions, including the systematic lack of due process, inadequate compensation, and the excessive use of force.
“Given the disastrous humanitarian situation faced by the victims of forced evictions, I urge Cambodian authorities to establish a national moratorium on evictions until their policies and actions in this regard have been brought into full conformity with international human rights obligations.”
Ms. Rolnik, who reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, took up her post last May and serves in an independent and unpaid capacity, as do all Special Rapporteurs.

Janet Jackson may sing in Vietnam next year

The US star Janet Jackson may go to Vietnam to attend a music gala on February 25, 2009 at the Thong Nhat Palace, HCM City.

The show organizers and Janet Jackson’s managers negotiated for the show in 2008. Part of the income from this show will be donated to Vietnamese Agent Orange victims, the poor and single elderly people.

Janet Jackson was born on May 16, 1996 in Gary, Indiana, USA. She is the youngest child in a family of ten children, including superstar Michael Jackson.

In the 1990s, Janet Jackson won fame in the world through the albums Control (1986), Rhythm 1814 (1989), Janet (1993), The Velvet Rope (1996), and with hits, such as What have you done for me lately, Alright, Come Back to me, and Miss you Much.

Since 2000, she has also released several successful albums, such as All for You, Damita Jo., 20 Y.O., and Discipline.

(Source: TN)