VietNamNet Bridge – Farmers are leaving Cat Tuong Commune in the central province of Binh Dinh in droves since its population has exploded and farming is no longer a viable occupation for most.

Workers wait for jobs in HCM City. Many people leave their homeland and rush to the big city with dreams of seeking a better life.

Le Thanh Tien, the chairman of the commune People Committee, said in the last decade the rising population has sharply reduced the arable land per capita, which is not only little but not very fertile either, yielding just 200-350kg of rice per 500sq.m

Tien put the number of people who have left the commune for other provinces and cities at over 1,000, with a majority being women. The commune’s population is around 18,000.

In Chanh Liem Village, for instance, the Women’s Association reported to commune authorities that around 200 people have migrated.

Dang Thi Ngoc Bich, a native of the village who now lives in HCM City, has criss-crossed the country for many years now in search of a livelihood. In that period she has lived in many places between the Central Highlands and HCM City.

Bich cannot remember when she left the village, but pointed to her sixth-grade son she left behind in his infancy as an indication of the period she has been absent from home.

She started off as an itinerant fish-sauce trader, travelling between Binh Dinh and the highland province of Dac Lac. Her business thrived at first. However, more and more began to copy her idea, gradually pushing her out of the business. "They opened shops and downed the price," she said.

In desperation, she switched to selling plastic and metal goods. Carrying her load on a bamboo pole slung over her shoulder, she would hawk her products across Gia Lai Province’s difficult terrain. It left her exhausted and with little money to even make ends meet, let alone sending her three kids to school.

Bich finally drifted to HCM City, where she sold scrap also with the aid of the bamboo pole. The challenges here were different: city lights, intimidation, discrimination, parochialism, social evils, fights, unhygienic living conditions. She lives there now in a rented flat crammed with up to 100 workers.

Sharing the load

Nguyen Van Huynh of the same village has a different approach – he and his wife alternately leave the village to eke out a livelihood. When his wife is out selling food or scrap, he stays behind to look after their kids, cattle, and (1,500sq) of ricefields.

Huynh, aged over 40, is, however, tired of life as an itinerant ice-cream seller that took him as far away as Da Nang and Hoi An. He is considering staying at home for good and letting his wife carry on with her trade. She has already been absent for several years, leaving him alone with the kids in a crumbling hut.

Most villagers who left in poverty return in similar condition, since they are unskilled and have no education.

Despite working so hard for so many years in the face of the harshest possible tribulations, Bich and her family have never looked like shaking off the terrible poverty that afflicts them.

But asked if she regrets leaving her homeland in the first place, Bich pointed to the several sao of abandoned ricefields as an explanation. The infertile soil does not produce enough to support a family of six.

"If we stay at home, we’ll have nothing to eat," she said simply.

There are some families in the commune that earn a reasonable living by practising traditional handicrafts. But it is not an option for most others because certain families control the vocations, carefully passing down their trade secrets within their own families.

Local authorities do not know what to make of this mass migration, Le Thanh Tien said. "We can neither endorse nor condemn it because it has both positive and negative aspects."

On the positive side, it creates jobs and improves opportunities for local farmers.

On the other hand, it destroys family relationships which have until now been very durable. Affairs in the absence of spouses, quarrels when they find out, and neglected kids dropping out of school have become increasingly common occurrences. Many families break apart.

"We do not know how to resolve this problem," Tien admitted. "We rest our hopes entirely on industrial parks like Go Mit and Hoa Hoi that are under construction and keep our fingers crossed," Tien said.

(Source: Viet Nam News)