The Government needs to work out comprehensive solutions to control population and labour migraton in the Mekong Delta region to ensure security and defence, officials have said.

Drought in Mekong Delta region

Sweeping changes in regional population spurred by climate change left critical impacts on the lives and production of local people, Ma Quang Trung, Deputy Director of the Department of Cooperatives and Rural Development under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said during a working session with the Steering Committee for Southwest Region in Can Tho city on February 22.

He suggested the region make further evaluations on the increasing number of Vietnamese people returning home from Cambodia in order to propose measures to stabilise their lives.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Hoang Hanh, an official of the Steering Committee for Southwest Region, said that unstable jobs driven by climate change have forced local labourers flock to Ho Chi Minh City and the southeast to seek employments.

According to the committee, drought and saline intrusion in the last months of 2015 and early 2016 damaged 208,461 hectares of paddy, 24,226 hectares of fruit trees and 3,059 hectares of aquaculture farming worth over 3.6 trillion VND (157.7 million USD) and affected the lives of more than 320,920 households.

VNA