Citizens promoting their core role

Vằng Xôn village currently has 121 households with 571 inhabitants, whose livelihoods mainly rely on agricultural production and animal husbandry. For many years, the local people have worked diligently, proactively seeking economic development paths to step-by-step upgrade their living standards. Thanks to boldly applying technical advances, livestock farming has expanded, bringing the village’s total livestock herd to over 300 heads. To date, the entire village features 116 out of 121 households classified as well-off or wealthy, with only 5 near-poor households remaining. Living conditions in Vằng Xôn are also improving day by day, with 90% of families owning permanent houses.

Lèng Văn Hùng, Secretary of the Vằng Xôn village Party Cell, excitedly stated: “In recent years, the houses of our people here have become much more spacious, and production is also favorable thanks to the timely orientation of the commune government. More importantly, the villagers have changed their way of thinking, studying hard and knowing how to calculate and do business. The party cell will continue to mobilize the people to maintain that spirit, working together to develop the economy and build an increasingly thriving village.”

Not only in Vằng Xôn, the spirit of self-reliance is also spreading to many other villages across Chà Tở commune. Located nearly 30 km of dirt road from the commune center, Nậm Chua village is one of the deep, remote areas that still lacks access to the national power grid. In early June 2026, the village was supported by the provincial Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Committee, the provincial People’s Court, and Petrolimex Điện Biên One Member LLC to install a solar power system for daily life activities. What is most valuable, however, is that the villagers do not passively wait or rely on assistance but proactively develop the economy through their own labor.

The village currently consists of 33 households, yet only 4 poor households remain. Capitalizing on forest advantages, residents actively participate in protecting nearly 450 ha to earn extra income from forest environmental services payments. Along with that, livestock farming is maintained and developed with about 400 heads of livestock, predominantly pigs, contributing to raising incomes.

Village chief Khoàng Văn Phới shared: “The village doesn’t have the national power grid yet, and traveling is difficult, but with the support of solar electricity from all levels and sectors, our people have better living conditions. As for doing business, we still have to try by ourselves - protecting the forest, raising more livestock and poultry, and saving up gradually to ease the hardships.”

Removing bottlenecks to advance

Chà Tở commune was established based on the merger of two administrative units: Nậm Khăn and Chà Tở. Both were disadvantaged communes of the former Nậm Pồ district. Through the high efforts and determination of the party committee and authority, alongside the unison of the people, life here is step-by-step changing. To date, the commune’s poverty rate has fallen to 19.8%.

Lò Văn Kiên, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of the People’s Council of Chà Tở commune, stated that along with potentials in land and climate, the commune possesses the advantage of a large forest area with a coverage rate of nearly 69%. On that basis, the commune continues to mobilize residents to both protect the forest and develop the economy under the forest canopy. Currently, the people are maintaining and caring for over 180 ha of cinnamon, over 130 ha of sa nhân, and nearly 140 ha of lá dong, alongside some areas of black cardamom, contributing to creating stable livelihoods.

Despite achieving positive results, the process of building new-style rural areas in Chà Tở commune still faces many difficulties. Several criteria, such as average income, environment, transport infrastructure, cultural institutions, and electricity, remain uneven across areas. To step-by-step overcome this situation, the commune Party Committee and People’s Committee directed departments, sectors, and mass organizations to concentrate resources on supporting each village to fulfill weak criteria, particularly the income, infrastructure, and environment criteria groups. Simultaneously, they launched a widespread movement of “The State and the People work together,” mobilizing public strength to renovate internal village roads, solidify irrigation canals, and repair cultural houses and sports playgrounds in residential areas.

According to Lò Văn Kiên, immediately after implementing the two-level local government model, the commune established multiple working groups to regularly go down to each village to grasp the situation, listen to the People’s opinions, and build specific deployment plans for each group of tasks and each locality. This approach has helped the commune promptly capture snags from the grassroots and provide reality-aligned directions, avoiding scattered and ineffective implementations.

On June 3, during a working session with the commune Party Committee, Mùa A Vảng, Deputy Secretary of the provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the provincial VFF Committee, suggested several directions to help the locality better leverage its potentials and advantages. Within this, he emphasized that the commune needs to continue reviewing and correctly assessing the actual status of each village and each group of criteria to formulate appropriate solutions, prioritizing resources for areas still facing many difficulties, especially regarding essential infrastructure and livelihoods for residents. Particularly, the commune needs to exploit forest advantages, boosting economic development under the forest canopy attached to resource protection, while researching community-based tourism development and expanding the acreage of high-value crops such as coffee, macadamia, and sa nhân.

The provincial Party Committee Deputy Secretary also emphasized that during deployment, the commune’s party committee and authority must stay close to the grassroots, listen to the legitimate aspirations and opinions of the People, and promote the core role of residents, while effectively mobilizing and integrating resources, programs, and projects to achieve sustainable poverty reduction.