The statement was made by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung at the opening ceremony of the 21st ASEAN Labour Ministerial Meeting in Hanoi on May 24.

Themed “Human resource development for economic recovery and growth,” the meeting will discuss measures to improve labour force, and approve an action plan for the ASEAN Labour Minister in the 2010-2015 period regarding many important issues. These issues include human resource development, sustainable job promotion, social welfare and equality, and emigrant labourer protection. These practical issues have helped strengthen ASEAN co-operation in social and labour affairs together with sustainable jobs and social equality targets initiated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

PM Dung expressed his belief that the meeting will establish the action plan of the ASEAN Labour Minister in the 2010-2015 period and exchange experience and new initiatives to for measures to deal with the current issues generating sustainable jobs, improving living and working conditions, reducing labour accidents and occupational diseases and building harmonised relations among ASEAN member countries as well as contributing to dealing with the negative impact of the global financial and economic crisis and building the ASEAN community in 2015.

Mr Dung emphasised that Vietnam attaches much importance to social development, especially on poverty reduction. In recent years, thanks to great attention from the Party and State and effort of the whole society, the social welfare system has been completed. Many social development projects have also been implemented, resulting in significant achievements with the number of poor households nationwide dropping to 11 percent.

Currently, Vietnam continues implementing poverty reduction, job generation and human resource improvement programmes, such as a programme to quickly eliminate poverty in 62 poor districts and a project to generate rural jobs in the 2011-2020 period. It is building a social welfare strategy and planning to implement it in rural areas over the 2010-2020 period.

The meeting will focus discussion on evaluating the previous action plan in 2005-2010, measures to carry out the ASEAN Labour Minister’s plans in the future, identifing ALMM’s prioritised fields in 2010 and approving important documents related to ALMM activities in the future.

After the opening ceremony, several other meetings took place, such as the ASEAN Plus Eight Labour Ministers Meeting and the Secretary-General of the ASEAN plus Three Meeting and the ASEAN plus Three Labour Ministers Meeting.