Ensuring social progress, equality, and welfare, and building a Vietnamese citizenry with characteristics that meet the requirements of the new era are the tasks set for the Ministries of Labour, Invalids and Social affairs, and Culture, Sports and Tourism in the time ahead.

Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung speaks
at a working session of the 13th National Party Congress. (Photo: VNA)

The views were shared by the two ministers during their presentations to the ongoing 13th National Party Congress on January 27.

Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung highlighted Vietnam’s internationally-recognised achievements in poverty reduction and the creation of 8 million jobs over the last five years.

Social and health insurance have become the main pillars of Vietnam’s social welfare system, especially voluntary social insurance, where the number of participants stood at about 750,000 in 2019-2020; triple the figure from a decade ago.

Such achievements demonstrate the sound guidelines and policies from the Party and the State and the superiority of the socialist regime in Vietnam, he went on. 

People should be the target of development and also its driver, and be the centre of all social policies, and social policies caring for the people are strategic and regular tasks for the Party, the State, agencies, organisations, individuals, and society as a whole, the minister said.

To achieve goals in sustainable development, Dung suggested further implementing sustainable poverty reduction policies, improving human resources quality, developing a healthy, synchronous, modern, integrated, and cooperative labour market, and generating sustainable jobs, especially for young and middle-aged people.

The minister also emphasised the need to step up communications work to raise awareness among the public, and especially leaders of agencies and organisations, about social management and development.

He also suggested increasing resources for the implementation of social policies and improving the quality of social services.

In his presentation, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Ngoc Thien pointed out the achievements and limitations in culture and human development over recent times.

He suggested cultural building in politics and economy, with attention paid to cultural building in the Party, State agencies, and mass organisations, which, he said, is a crucial factor in building a pure and strong political system.

Developing cultural industries is needed to create cultural products and services by Vietnamese people and for Vietnamese people, which will help promote Vietnamese culture, and turn cultural potential into socio-economic resources, the official said.

Thien proposed enhancing the Party’s leadership of the development of Vietnamese culture and people in the new era, and improving the efficiency of State management in culture, saying that cultural development should be in tandem with political development.