According to the chairman, the rate of present child marriage is 26.6 percent with 40 ethnic minority groups having 20 percent up and 13 having 50 percent.
At the Q&A, participants paid their concern to the implementation of policies on ethnic minority groups’ access to essential social services (such as education and training; health care), infrastructure, vocational training and job creation, poverty reduction and improvement of material and spiritual lives.
Marriage between first cousins accounts for 4 – 5 percent, said Mr. Chien while a perinatal and child mortality rate is still high.
The percentage of pregnant women going to medical clinics is 70.9 percent and 36.3 percent of them gave birth at home. The proportion of undernourished kids is 32 percent.
Just 79.2 percent of ethnic minority people can read and write whereas the country’s literate average rate is 94.7 percent. Approximately 15 percent of ethnic minority women at the age of 15 is literate. The percentage of junior and senior high schoolers are 83.9 percent and 41.8 percent.
There should have some changes in education and training policies for districts where most of ethnic minority people live.
Noticeably, the unemployment amongst young local people is a headache; the rate of unemployed people is 5.76 percent, 2.5 times higher than the country’s with 2.34 percent.
Additionally, ethnic minority household have little farm land and they are short of clean water for daily activities.
