Though 87 percent of emigrants to the Central Highlands region of Vietnam have been assigned land for cultivation to settle down, authorities have admitted the migration is a burden to their plans for social development.

The region, including the provinces of Dak Lak, Gia Lai, Dak Nong and Kon Tum, has received the most emigrants, with almost a million from 190,000 households from 1975 to 2014, according to a survey of the Government Office.

About 870,000 of them have stabilized their lives, while the remaining 130,000 emigrants have no farmland and live scattered across the region’s forests.

They have to illegally chop down forest trees to create land for cultivation, said Trang Quang Thanh, director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Dak Lak at a Party meeting last week.

Dak Lak Province has approved the spending of VND811 billion (US$39 million) on assistance for 32,600 emigrants from 6,500 families in the past years.

From now till 2020, the province needs VND150-200 billion ($7.2 million-9.6 million) per year to assist 1,000 households on average, Thanh said.

With around 55,000 households relocating in recent years, the northwestern region of Vietnam ranks second in the number of migrants after the Central Highlands.

However, migration has dropped sharply across the Southeast Asian country, according to the Government Office.

In 2008, Vietnam had 4,247 households with 18,500 members migrating, the numbers which fell to 695 households with over 2,000 members migrating in 2013, decreasing by 83 percent in five years.

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