President joins in Khmer festival

President Nguyen Minh Triet yesterday gave his wishes to the Khmer people at home and abroad on the occasion of Chol Chnam Thmay new year festival during a meeting with leaders from the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta.

Chol Chnam Thmay festival, which takes place this year between April 14-16,demonstrates the Khmer people's aspirations to forget about the previous year's misfortunes, while looking ahead to a better year ahead.

On this occasion, Triet said he highly appreciated the great contributions made by minority groups, including the Khmer people, in the southern provinces.

He emphasised that Khmer people were an inseparable ethnic group of the Vietnamese community, who contribute to Vietnam's economic development despite the great difficulties that were left behind from previous wars.

Triet said that the Party and State always made efforts to stabilise the economy and consolidate national solidarity in order to support minority groups.

The southern provinces have spent more than VND500 billion (US$26 million) to implement social welfare programmes for the more than 1.3 million Khmer ethnic people, who make up 8 per cent of the total population.

Last year, more than 5,000 Khmer households escaped from poverty and more than 80 per cent now have access to electricity, clean water, television and radio. Also, more than 90 per cent of Khmer children attend school.

Khmer ethnic people's religious freedom has always been respected.

Tra Vinh Province, which has more than 300,000 Khmer ethnic people, has been successfully implementing support programmes.

Specifically, more than 13,100 poor Khmer households received accommodations and more than 5,500 households received cows.

Triet asked the relevant authorities to continue paying attention to improving the lives of ethnic groups in Vietnam.

He also asked the Khmer people, who live and work in the country and abroad, to bring into full play their solidarity tradition and to continue studying and working for the development of the country.