(VOVworld) – The Ministry of Construction held a meeting in Bac Ninh province on Thursday to review the Government’s program to promote housing for the poor. Minister Trinh Dinh Dung, Deputy Head of the Central Steering Board on policy on housing and real estate market, said it is the biggest and most effective program to date. The 4-year plan began in 2009 and aimed to build half a million new houses. It has been completed after 3 years, one year ahead of the schedule. During his speech, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the program was backed by the Party, Government and had the support of the whole community. Prime Minister Dung also underscored that the Government takes care and supports policy beneficiaries and disadvantaged people who have housing issues. He instructed the Ministry of Construction to work with relevant agencies and complete the program’s second phase, up to 2015, to submit to the Prime Minister. PM Dung said ‘We identified this program’s strong points during the first phase so we will do better in the second phase. Those who are accepted as poor will be identified under the new criteria, so the number of households may rise. I agree on the state’s level of support being 30% of the capital needed to build a house. We will also draw lessons from this program for other future programs on housing for policy beneficiaries and low-income people’.

Mr. Dung asked the Ministry of Construction to take charge of the second phase to build houses in the Mekong River Delta that are safe from floods and a program to enable people to have safe accommodation in the flood-prone northern central and coastal areas.