Conference reviews five years implementing pilot population control model in border areas

(LSO) – The General Office for Population and Family Planning held a conference in Lang Son city on December 23 to review the five-year implementation of the pilot population control model in border areas.

 The conference was attended by Duong Xuan Huyen, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee and head of Lang Son province’s Steering Committee for Population and Family Planning; representatives from the General Office for Population and Family Planning and the Population and Family Planning offices of provinces implementing the pilot model which are Ha Giang, Son La, Thanh Hoa, Ha Tinh and Lang Son.

Duong Xuan Huyen, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, addresses the conference

Over the past five years, with the attention of Party Committees and administrations at all levels, the enthusiastic coordination of sectors, agencies, mass organisations and the border guard force, population workers in 20 border districts and 50 border communes in the five provinces have worked hard to encourage local residents to follow the population policies towards reducing and stabilizing the birth rate, improving population quality and fulfilling the targets of the target programme on health care and population for 2016-2020.

Lang Son has 21 communes and townships in five border districts with 15,640 households, 68,840 people. In the past five years, the province has reaped positive outcomes through communication campaigns in changing the behavior of border residents in using population control services, reducing child marriages and ending consanguineous marriages. After five years of implementing the pilot model, Lang Son now records an average population growth of 0.65 percent, and the total fertility rate in 2019 was 2.13 children born/woman (the rate in 2016 was 2.26 children born/woman).

An overview of the conference

Addressing the conference, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Duong Xuan Huyen affirmed that the pilot population control model in border areas was a breakthrough in raising the population quality in border areas to be equal or higher than that in the inland. Therefore, the implementation of the model always received attention and close instruction of the provincial Party Committee, People’s Council and People’s Committee, as well as the responsible coordination of the border guard force, sectors and organisations in the province and border districts and communes, along with the support and active participation of residents in border areas.