III. POLICIES ON POPULATION AND EMPLOYMENT, ON INCOMES, SOCIAL INSURANCE AND HEALTH CARE

1. Policies on population and employment

To comprehensively implement the strategy on population in three respects: size, composition and distribution of population; to reduce population growth rate by about 0.4 to 0.6 per thousand annually.

To translate into practice the family planning programme by means of radical and integrated measures on the basis of a nation-wide and in-depth social movement, mobilizing all forces, using various types of organization, combining respect for freedom of choice and persuasion with guarantees of the interests of different parties concerned, and with mother and child care as well as with women's emancipation. Reducing the annual population growth rate constitutes an important task for the administration and people's organizations at all levels, particularly in localities and among population strata with high birth rates. The State is to adequately invest in this programme, at the same time mobilizing different forms of voluntary contribution of efforts and money, to actively solicit and efficiently utilize grants from the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and other international organizations.

To solve the employment problem and utilize the potential labour force to the maximum constitutes an objective of primary importance in this strategy, and a criterion for determining the directions of economic structure and technological selection. Priority is to be given to provision of employment for those of working age, especially in urban areas, and demobilised soldiers and graduates.

Working people should take the initiative in generating their own jobs and in looking for jobs. All occupations that produce income for the worker and benefit society are respected, The State is to provide conditions in terms of system, policies, environment conducive to production and business, and vocational training. to rapidly increase the proportion of specialized workers, to encourage multi-skilled workers.

To enact a law on labour, guaranteeing everyone the right to be master of his or her own work. Within the framework of the law, everyone is free to learn and pursue a vocation, to choose his work and place of work, and to hire manpower. To organize a labour market and different forms of job centre; to renew policies on residence and household registration; to expand the system of labour contracting; to apply preferential policies toward those who work in difficult working and living conditions.

The national employment programme is to focus on developing selected sectors and localities capable of job generation such as cultivation and processing of farm, forestry and aquatic produce, production for export, labour-intensive industries, greening and utilization of barren land and denuded hills, building of infrastructure, expansion of the service sector and export of workers.

2. Policies on Incomes and social insurance

To encourage everybody to make his or her living legally so as to increase his incomes. To remunerate according to work productivity, effectiveness of production-business, and efficiency of work; to encourage higher incomes based on work outcome, to draw up an income scale which corresponds to the progressive value scale in society. The State is to use income tax in order to contribute to the ensuring of social justice.

To reform the wage and salary system in the public sector in the direction of ensuring reproduction of labour-power, monetization of wages and salaries, abolition of subsidies and overcoming egalitarianism. To reform the wage and salary system in association with restructuring of the State apparatus, re-deployment of staff in accordance with the new system, to reform the insurance system. Where major changes in prices occur, the State is to provide timely and adequate compensation for wage earners and pensioners.

To develop production and life insurance services based on voluntary contributions, operating on the basis of cost-accounting under State guarantee.

To implement a policy under which the entire people make contributions as an expression of gratitude to wounded soldiers, families of fallen combatants, to those who have rendered meritorious services to the nation; a policy on sponsoring orphans, the disabled and helpless aged; a policy on providing relief to disaster-prone areas, and to destitute families. Funds may come from such sources as social foundations, charitable societies, aid from international humanitarian organizations and partly from the State budget.

To renovate the policy on housing. The State is to encourage and create favourable conditions for people to build their own houses in accordance with residential planning regulations. The owner of a house is entitled to rent, bequeath or sell it. State-owned houses are to be sold or rented at fair prices with the rental being sufficiently incorporated into the salary. Housing companies are to operate under a system of cost-accounting and capital retrieval for reinvestment. To develop housing banks.

3. Policies on health protection

To protect and improve the health and physical condition of the people, to combat malnutrition among children, to increase the height and weight of the younger generations, to raise the average life expectancy of Vietnamese people.

To eradicate the perennial and inter-harvest famines existing in some areas; to improve the diet, increase the proportion of foodstuffs rich in energy and nutrition; to boost the production of ready-made food; to strive to achieve on average 2,400 calories per head/day by the year 2000.

To expand the scope and improve the quality of disease prevention and treatment, to comprehensively develop preventive medicine, to combine traditional medico-pharmacology with modern science, to create a number of cutting edge industries in Vietnamese medicine.

To consolidate and expand the grassroots medical network and primary health care down to household level. To successfully implement children's immunization programmes, to combat malaria and goitre. To eliminate in each region infectious and parasitic diseases, and widespread social diseases, to keep other common diseases in check; to prevent AIDS. To implement programmes in clean water supply, waste treatment, to build sanitation facilities in urban and rural areas. To halt deterioration, to provide better equipment and improve the quality of treatment at State hospitals. To set up more rehabilitation and health care centres intended for the aged.

A number of modern health care centres are to be built. Activities by collective and private health care service units are to be encouraged, guided and controlled. Production and export and import are to be promoted in an effort to meet the need for pharmaceutical substances, medicines and medical facilities.

Reasonable health care fees are to be levied on patients; health-care allowances for workers and public employees will be incorporated into salaries and wages; at the same time a policy is to be enacted on granting direct allowances to certain eligible recipients. Health insurance and accident insurance are to be expanded.

To launch among the population, particularly among young people, a movement to engage in physical training and sports both in width and in depth. Physical culture and sport clubs and societies which operate on a self-governing and self-financing basis under the control of and 'With partial financial support from the State are to become more numerous.

Note:   Other sections of the strategy deal with socio-economic status, development advantages and resources, development point of view and objectives.