PANO – The Steering Committee for the Project to protect and develop forests in the border belt (Project 1380) organized a conference in Hanoi on July 18th to review the progress of the project and discuss measures to implement some urgent tasks in the rest of 2013.
Senior Lieutenant General Le Huu Duc, Deputy Minister of National Defence and Head of the Steering Committee for Project 1380, chaired the conference with the participation of representatives from relevant government agencies.
Major General Tran Trung Tin, Director of the Economic Department under the MoD, said that the border belt is the territory along the 4,710 km national border. The border belt runs through 25 provinces, 98 districts and 417 communes, where strategic positions of national border defence and ecological environment protection are.
In recent years, military units stationed along the border have made great efforts to grow trees to cover bare mountains, hills and land. However, due to tough terrain, severe weather conditions and low population, forest planting work faces many difficulties. As a result, forest coverage along the border belt has just reached about 68.6 per cent.
According to the MoD’s proposal, the Prime Minister signed Decision 1380/QD-TTg on 12th August 2011 to approve the project to protect and develop forests along the border belt in 2011-2020 period, aiming to protect and develop sustainable forests along the border line, ensure security and defence, contribute to job generation, increase income, reduce poverty among local people, prevent natural disasters and protect the ecological environment.
After nearly two years of implementation, the MoD plan for forest plantation areas along the border belt has established a National Steering Committee for Project 1380 and instructed units and localities on the implementation.
However, during its implementation, the project faced many difficulties due to tough terrain. The Prime Minister allowed the MoD to cooperate with relevant government agencies to make special policies and mechanisms, but they have not been issued due to disagreement among some members in the Project Executive Board.
Moreover, the budget allocated for the project implementation is limited. In 2013, the MoD only managed to allocate 6.44 billion VND to implement forest plantation projects. Accordingly, 9,000 hectares of forests which have been planted can not be taken care of, due to lack of financial investment.
The participants to the conference also made clear the situation and proposed many measures in order to overcome the difficulties in the implementation of the project.
Senior Lieutenant General Le Huu Duc confirmed that the plan to build a green border belt is right. He also analysed difficulties in the implementation and answered questions relating to the MoD’s responsibilities and authority.
The general also asked relevant government agencies to get involved to overcome the difficulties.
Translated by Ngoc Hung
Đăng ký: VietNam News
