General Secretary suggests Hanoi provide free lunch for students

Need to deal with encroachment on roads and sidewalks

On the morning of April 17, General Secretary To Lam and National Assembly deputies of constituency No. 1 of Hanoi (Ba Dinh, Dong Da, Hai Ba Trung) met with voters before the 9th session of the 15th National Assembly.

General Secretary To Lam suggests Hanoi leaders provide free school lunches for more than 1 million students.

PHOTO: GIA HAN

At the conference, after discussing some common issues of the country with voters, General Secretary To Lam raised two major issues and asked Hanoi to pay attention to handling them.

The first issue, according to the General Secretary, is the issue of ensuring food safety because the capital cannot afford to lose food safety. If food safety is lost, it will affect the capital's reputation, affect the health of the people, and affect the quality of the city's urban areas.

According to General Secretary To Lam, voters are very concerned about this issue, especially when in Hanoi there are areas selling street food, temporary markets, flea markets, selling food of unknown origin, expired goods, fake goods, counterfeit goods. Among them, there are essential goods such as powdered milk for children, affecting people's health, causing social outrage.

Therefore, the city needs to have a "special topic" on this issue to handle the situation of encroachment on roads and sidewalks for trading. Because this not only affects urban aesthetics and urban order, but also poses a potential risk of food safety and hygiene, making it difficult for the inspection and control work of functional forces.

Must reduce learning pressure for students

The second issue, according to the General Secretary, is that Hanoi needs to take care of education and school policies. In particular, it is necessary to continue to pay close attention to ensuring the quality of teaching and learning, and taking care of the comprehensive development of the capital's children.

The General Secretary analyzed that recently, the Ministry of Education and Training has issued guidelines on organizing 2 sessions/day for primary and secondary school students. Therefore, the spirit is not to increase the pressure of studying for students, not to increase tuition fees, not to increase extra teaching and learning.

In particular, the General Secretary also suggested that Hanoi should have a policy of supporting free school lunches for students to reduce pressure on parents who do not have to take their children to and from school at noon.

According to the General Secretary, Hanoi currently has about 1.2 - 1.3 million primary and secondary school students. If each free meal costs about 30,000 VND, Hanoi will have to spend about 100 billion VND/month. For one school year, the cost is about 900 billion VND.

"In the first quarter of 2025, Hanoi's budget revenue of about 250,000 billion VND is more than enough," the General Secretary said, asking Hanoi to study.

The General Secretary also suggested reducing the pressure of studying for students, helping them have time to play, relax, and learn other subjects. For example, in the morning they can study culture, in the afternoon they can study English, or some other special subject.

"The other day I suggested to the education sector that every child, upon graduating from high school, should know how to play a musical instrument. This is highly encouraged. Some children can play the flute, some can play the piano, depending on their talents... Children living in peace should enjoy this," said the General Secretary.