Local authorities in the northwestern region have created close linkswith religious organisations and dignitaries, helping ensure fundamentalreligious stability there in recent years.

This was affirmed at the Steering Committee for the Northwest’s meeting on religious work, in Hanoi on May 25.

Addressingthe meeting, Truong Tan Sang, Politburo member and permanent member ofthe Secretariat of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee,stressed the northwestern region was an especially important strategicarea of the country, with potential in agriculture, forestry, minerals,tourism and economic trade border gates.

“The Party and Statehave in recent years issued policies on socio-economic development,building the political system, ensuring security and national defence inthe region in line with the spirit of the Politburo’s Resolution 37, inwhich special attention was given to ethnic and religion-related work,”he said.

He hailed results from the implementation of theParty’s guidelines and the State’s policies relating to religion,particularly the Central Committee Resolution 7 (tenure IX).

Sangnoted key tasks for the following years, urging ministries, central andlocal agencies to join hands to carry out solutions and to concentrateinvestment in socio-economic and cultural development for thenorthwestern region.

The related agencies should implementcultivating and living settlement work, helping local residentsstabilise and develop their production, he added.

Localitiesneeded to focus investment on construction of essential infrastructure,such as roads, electricity network, small hydropower plants, watersupply facility, communal cultural houses, classrooms, kindergartens andcommunal headquarters, along with carrying out policies toward povertyreduction and social security, he said.

Sang emphasised the needto build and strengthen the political system from provincial to villagelevels, increase human resource training, and offer incentives for youngintellectuals who were ethnic minority people.

According to theSteering Committee’s report, in recent years the Party and State haveissued new policies on religious work. Local committees and authoritieshave implemented the guidelines and developed them into programmes ofactions and working plans for their localities.

Local authoritiesalso visited and encouraged religious organisations, individuals,dignitaries and followers on the occasions of public holidays and majorreligious festivals, and praised outstanding organisations andindividuals of local movements on labour, production and businessexcellence./.