Nga An - from a purely agricultural countryside to a model new rural area

The modern, spacious rural appearance of Nga An commune (Nga Son).

At the end of 2013, Nga An commune was recognized as meeting the NTM standards, considered one of the communes that "reached the finish line" early in Thanh Hoa province in general and Nga Son district in particular. Identifying that NTM construction is a regular and continuous task, with a starting point and no end point, Nga An commune continues to mobilize the entire political system to join hands in building advanced NTM. In particular, it is necessary to mention that the Party Committee, government, Fatherland Front and local political organizations have strongly focused on the grassroots level "listening to people, speaking for people to understand, making people believe" to arouse people's hearts and strength for the task of building rural space in a synchronous and modern direction. From "Party's will - people's heart", in October 2022, Nga An commune reached the advanced NTM finish line.

In order to realize the goal of creating a livable countryside in Mai An Tiem's ​​hometown, Nga Son district has assigned the task to the Party Committee, government and people to strive to bring Nga An to the "finish line" of the model new rural area in 2023. Following the direction of the district, the commune Party Committee proactively met and agreed to issue a thematic resolution on "Model new rural area construction". At the same time, the Steering Committee of the National Target Program on New Rural Area Construction in the commune was completed and tasks were assigned to each member in charge, guiding the villages to organize the implementation of tasks related to Model New Rural Area Construction. In particular, the People's Committee of the commune was assigned to base on the actual conditions of the locality to develop a plan to implement specific tasks of Model New Rural Area Construction for each month, quarter and year and deploy it to the villages.

Realizing that people's strength is the key factor, Nga An commune has stepped up propaganda to make people understand that building a model new rural area is to continue building a synchronous and modern rural infrastructure. At the same time, promoting the development of production in the direction of goods, large scale, applying high technology, aiming to improve the material and spiritual life of the people. From there, people of all walks of life have actively contributed their efforts and money to effectively carry out the tasks in building a model new rural area. Specifically, Nga An commune has mobilized 313.9 billion VND for building a model new rural area. Of which, the state budget is more than 36 billion VND; credit and business loans are 108.745 billion VND; People's contributions are 169.101 billion VND. From the mobilized capital, the commune has focused on investing in building synchronous and modern infrastructure works to meet the requirements of socio-economic development tasks, serving well the life, activities and production of local people.

Nga An commune today is wearing a "new coat", with 189 traffic routes, equivalent to about 64km, being concreted and asphalted, ensuring people's travel and trade of goods. To build a model road, bright - green - clean - beautiful, from 2022 to now, the people in the commune have joined hands to plant 3km of new shade trees, 2km of tea trees and 2km of pearl-eyed trees. Thereby, the total number of communal and inter-village roads planted with flowers and shade trees along both sides of the road has reached more than 19km. Along with the solid concrete roads running to each gate and alley of each household, works such as schools, medical stations, cultural and sports centers, communal offices, and village cultural houses have been invested in and built in a spacious manner in the direction of rural urbanization, creating a new look for the purely agricultural countryside of Nga An.

With the policy of taking increasing income for people as a breakthrough, Nga An commune has focused on re-planning the land, associated with building large specialized fields. Currently, in the commune, there have been formed areas specializing in winter potatoes, winter-spring potatoes, green squash, off-season vegetables and a model of growing vegetables and fruits in greenhouses for high productivity and efficiency. In addition, the farm economy and aquaculture farms continue to develop and become a key sector in the local agricultural economy. Farms and aquaculture farms have proactively introduced new breeds into production such as white-leg shrimp and black carp, contributing to increasing people's income. In particular, the linkage in agricultural production has been gradually formed. From the forms of production organization and reasonable economic structure, it has contributed to bringing the annual economic growth rate of Nga An commune to over 13%. The economic structure has shifted in a positive direction, contributing to increasing production value and per capita income in recent years. By the end of 2024, the commune's per capita income reached 71.5 million VND; the proportion of well-off and rich households accounted for more than 80%.

One of the mandatory criteria in the new rural model is to build a "Smart Village" model. Based on the survey and assessment of socio-economic conditions, residential area, and infrastructure, Nga An commune has selected village 5 to implement the "Smart Village" model. Accordingly, the commune has established a working group to coordinate with village officials to disseminate knowledge about digital transformation of the community; guide the use of online public services, install applications and create electronic payment accounts; propagate and guide people, production and business establishments to make electronic payments and conduct e-commerce transactions. Along with creating a zalo group for officials and people, village 5 also uses the social network Facebook and ThanhhoaS application as important information channels to disseminate and propagate the Party's guidelines and policies, and the State's policies and laws to the people. More notably, Village 5 has deployed a security camera model with 13 eyes connected to the security camera system of the commune police. Since the security camera model was installed, the number of incidents related to security and order, social evils in the village has decreased significantly and people's awareness of maintaining security and order, building a civilized and modern lifestyle has been raised.

As a village with a fairly developed economy, people in village 5 enjoy quite complete telecommunications and internet services. 3G and 4G mobile information fiber optic cable services have been deployed by VNPT Thanh Hoa and Viettel Thanh Hoa to the main roads in the village, ready to meet the demand for service use and cover 100% of the village. Currently in village 5, the percentage of people of working age with skills to use online public services and essential digital services is 70.4%; 54.1% of people of working age in village 5 have electronic payment accounts to transfer money, withdraw from accounts, pay school fees for children, pay electricity, water bills, fees, and charges for using online public services.

The journey from a purely agricultural countryside to a model new-style rural area has created Nga An commune into a locality with a developed socio-economy and a modern, synchronous rural infrastructure. The most prominent are the economic structure and reasonable forms of production organization, linking rural development with urban planning. At the same time, the rural society is democratic, civilized, rich in identity, the landscape is bright - green - clean - beautiful, social order and safety are maintained, and the material and spiritual life of the people is increasingly improved. A clear proof is that 99.6% of the people in the commune are satisfied and excited about the achievements of Nga An's model new-style rural area construction.

Article and photos: Tran Thanh

Source: https://baothanhhoa.vn/nga-an-tu-vung-que-thuan-nong-den-ntm-kieu-mau-244207.htm