Building the Road to Prosperity

SEACAP projects in Vietnam aim to give local workers more skills to build and maintain rural roads, Michael Libucha reports for Vietnam News:

Building the Road to Rural Prosperity

When Nuguyen Xuan Tien's four year old son's fever refused to subside, he knew something was wrong. By the fifth day, the boy's condition worsened and the farmer from remote Lang Son Province became frantic.

Packing a knapsack filled with rice and dried meat, father and son headed down the communal red dirt track to wait for a ride into the area health centre. For two days that ride never came.

Flooding had washed away the access road linking Tien's tiny hamlet to the provincial capital, Lang Son town, which is linked to Ha Noi by National Highway 1A. By the time they reached Ha Noi hospital 3 days had passed and Tien was on the verge of losing his only child.

It is an all too familiar predicament for thousands of rural Vietnamese, whose access to health care, education, supplies and employment is sometimes made difficult due to poor road maintenance not to mention the effects of landslides and floods.

Roads are crucial in the fight against poverty, as investment in education, employment and trade are only effective if poeple have access. In many isolated rural areas, roads and transport services are far behind what's available in urban areas.

Click on the link below to continue reading this article and find out how SEACAP initiatives in Vietnam are using research into rural road surfacing as a tool to improve rural access.
www.ifrtd.org/new/issues/SEACAP_vietnamnews140908.pdf

Article by Michael Libucha for Vietnam News.

More information about SEACAP:
Website: www.seacap-info.org
Email: David Salter, Manager DFID/SEACAP davidsalter@online.com.kh