Vietnam worries about population growth

Press, 5 November 1984, Page 24

Vietnam worries about population growth

NZPA-AFP Hanoi Vietnam has sounded the population alarm as recent head counts put the figure al 60 million and growing fast. “The time has come to limit the number of births strictly to a level no higher than necessary,” said the Hanoi press, quoting the findings of a national demoStiical conference rey held in Ho Chi Minh City. Newspaper reports recently warned that Vietnam’s population was growing 1.3 million a year. They said that even to maintain

the present modest diet of the Vietnamese, the country would have to find an extra 400,000 tonnes of food annually. The Ho Chi Minh City conference emphasised that the Vietnamese authorities aimed for a drastic cut m population growth, bringing it down to an annual 1.7 per cent. Last year’s estimates in Vietnam’s chief newspaper, “Nhan Dan,” put the actual growth rate at 2.2 to 2.4 per cent, lower than in recent years. Conference delegates agreed on the need to get

under way with the work of persuasion and explanation among young couples,” « press reports said. . , They also endorsed Gov- • ernment guidelines which * recommend a maximum of » two children for each * couple, born five years apart, and advise women “ not to have children before - they are aged 22. “