A worker loads paddy onto a boat for a customer at Co Do Agriculture Company in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho. Photo by AFP
A child left behind: ‘I don’t want to leave school at all. But
these time are hard and now I have to take care of my parents.’
Social media has been filled with sadness and frustration in
recent days with a story of a seventh-grader in northern Vietnam Vietnam who
has decided to drop out of school because his family is too poor.
Quach Van Truc from a small commune in Thanh Hoa Province sent a
letter to his teachers this week, explaning why he could no longer go to class.
In the handwitten letter of great poignancy, Truc said his
father has pneumonia, his mother has heart conditions and his family has run
out of rice.
“I don’t want to leave school at all. But these time are hard
and now I have to take care of my parents,” he wrote.
“I will miss you guys a lot,” the child addressed his friends.
The boy’s letter.
Photo by VnExpress
Truc, who has a younger brother, was quoted by Thanh Nien
newspaper as saying in an interview that all local hospitals have turned down
his father because the family does not have money. He is also in the last stage
of chronic kidney disease.
“I’ve always wanted to become a doctor, to treat my dad
myself,” Truc told the daily in tears.
The boy said by dropping out, he wanted to give his brother a
better chance to finish school.
Teachers at the school, located in one of the poorest communes in
the province, have raised VND200,000, or nearly $10, to help their student.
They also gave the family 20 kilograms of rice.
But the teachers admitted this is not a long-lasting solution.
Local radio reported that the province on Friday offered VND5
million ($225) to the family.
The boy’s story has been shared widely on Facebook, drawing criticism of
social policies in a country where education is highly valued but is not always
afforadable.
Despite various supports for low-income families, Vietnam still
sees more than 1 percent of the country’s 22 million students drop out of
school and college every year, mostly due to poverty, according to official
data.
Many have said the use of public money should be reviewed and
tightened because wasteful public projects continue to be funded while many
children are left behind.
A recent report from the General Statistics Office said more
than one million Vietnamese people are living in hunger. They are among 1.4
million households, or 6 percent of families in the country, who are living
under the poverty line, or earning less than VND4.8 million ($215) a year per
capita.
A new policy effective later this year will redefine poverty as
earning less than VND8.4 million ($374) a year per person. This new threshold
is expected to raise the ratio of poor families in the country to 10 percent,
or more than 2.3 million.
Posted by:
Nguyen Ba Dat • Development CSU’s Programs Manager
Columbia Southern University • Faculty Development
Phone: 0932 020 974 – 08. 3910 6620 • Email: datcsu@hcm.fpt.vn
https://vn.linkedin.com/pub/dat-nguyen/21/63b/b40
Columbia Southern University • Faculty Development
Phone: 0932 020 974 – 08. 3910 6620 • Email: datcsu@hcm.fpt.vn
https://vn.linkedin.com/pub/dat-nguyen/21/63b/b40
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