Discussing in the hall about the policy orientation for amending the 2024 Land Law (August 21), many National Assembly deputies raised the issue of ensuring long-term life and livelihoods for people whose land is recovered.
Delegate Nguyen Duy Minh, Delegation of National Assembly Deputies of Da Nang City, made a noteworthy proposal that the spirit of shifting from compensation for recovered assets to rebuilding people's lives needs to be expressed more clearly in the draft law.
In fact, for a long time, regarding land acquisition, attention has often focused on compensation prices, compensated area, resettlement quota or resettlement area location.
These issues are very important, but mainly solve the property that people have lost. While behind a recovered land area is also the life of a family that may change in many years afterwards.
For many people, land, in addition to assets, is also a field for production, a business premise, a place to create jobs and income for the whole family.
Therefore, two households receiving the same compensation may not have the same ability to stabilize their lives. People with jobs and incomes that do not depend on land can adapt faster.
In particular, families living by agricultural production or trading right at their place of residence, losing land or moving to another place may mean having to rebuild their livelihoods from scratch.
Compensation money can help solve immediate needs, but cannot replace a stable source of income for many years.
Therefore, the spirit of "rebuilding life" needs to be concretized into measurable policies after land acquisition.
Reality also shows that a new house that is more spacious after resettlement does not necessarily mean a better life if people have to go too far from their workplace, school, business or lose the conditions that created their livelihoods.
That is also the reason why the on-site resettlement aspirations of people, when conditions permit, need to be recorded and considered in a substantive and serious manner.
More importantly, responsibility to people whose land is recovered should not end on the day the compensation money is fully transferred and the site is handed over, but there needs to be a period of support to restore livelihoods for people after land recovery, especially for households that have lost their main source of income.
In which, support programs such as vocational training must aim at job placement; vocational conversion support must be linked to actual income; resettlement arrangement must take into account the ability to access jobs and essential services.
Infrastructure, urban areas, industry and public works all need land resources. People giving land to those projects is also sharing a part of their resources for common development.
Therefore, "rebuilding life" for people after land acquisition is only truly meaningful when they have a stable new place to live, have jobs, have long-term income and have living conditions equal to or better than before.
For development projects, the responsibility to ensure the rights of affected people is not only the requirement of state management agencies but also the social responsibility of investors.
