A UXO victim in Quang Binh - Illustrative image (Source: VNA)Quang Binh (VNA) - Representatives from the Republic of Korea(RoK)-Vietnam Mine Action Project on May 26 presented food, face masks and handsanitisers to over 9,100 UXO survivors and their families in the centralprovinces of Quang Binh and Binh Dinh in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cho Han Deog, Country Director of the KoreaInternational Cooperation Agency (KOICA) in Vietnam, said that many people havebeen seriously affected by the disease.
The gifts are the Korean people’s sentimentsto the Vietnamese people, he stressed.
With the support of the AustralianDepartment of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Embassy of Ireland inVietnam and the KOICA, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Vietnam organisedthe rapid assessment to help identify health and socio-economic challengesfaced by People with Disabilities (PwDs) and their families during COVID-19.
Many of the UXO survivors in Quang Binh andBinh Dinh provinces participated in this assessment and shared theirdifficulties in accessing necessary medical care, supplies and basic items suchas food and personal protective equipment. Specifically, 66 percent of UXOvictims do not have enough money to purchase essentials, 59 percent see theirfamily income reduce and 35 percent are facing temporary unemployment.
“We wanted to react quickly to meet some ofthese urgent needs and today’s event is our immediate response to the surveyresults presented ten days ago,” said Caitlin Wiesen, UNDP ResidentRepresentative in Vietnam.
Assistance to UXO victims and theirfamilies is an important component of the RoK-Vietnam Mine Action Project,which was jointly launched in early 2018 by Vietnam National Mine ActionCentre, KOICA and UNDP to accelerate mine action for safety and sustainabledevelopment. In collaboration with the Ministry of Labor, Invalid and SocialAffairs, the project has developed an official database on 75,000 people withdisabilities, 9,100 of them are UXO survivors. The database includes needassessment of UXO survivors, thus enabling the project to provide them relevantand targeted support.
The project also helps strengthen thegovernance and management of national mine action activities and reduce futureaccidents through increasing the awareness in local communities about thepotential risk from ERW. The project has so far surveyed nearly 17,000 hectaresof land and cleared over 4,000 hectares of contaminated areas in Quang Binh andBinh Dinh, providing more land for development projects in these provinces./.
VNA
