VietNamNet Bridge – The Hanoi Department of Population and Family Planning has said that each year the city’s population increases by about 200,000 people, equivalent to the population of a large district. Of the new population, about 120,000 are newborn children and the rest are migrants.
The department’s director, Mr. Ta Quang Huy, said the increase of population posed a difficult problem for the future social and economic development of the capital city.
Hanoi’s population is the second largest in Vietnam, only behind HCM City. Notably, gender imbalance at birth and the number of families having the third child are on the rise. The number of women entering reproductive age in the city is over two times higher than the number of women out of childbearing age. The high number of migrants to Hanoi is also a big problem.
Huy said that the number of couples giving birth to their third child is increasing because the current law does not have any sanction on this. In 2012 – 2014, more than 1,000 public servants and Communist Party members in Hanoi were disciplined for violating the law on population and family planning.
Hanoi is facing many difficulties in inspecting and supervising clinics, particularly private ones, for offering fetus gender identification services, which are banned in Vietnam, Huy said.
In 2013, inspectors of the Hanoi Health Department imposed fines of VND40 million ($2,000) on a private clinic in Ha Dong District for disclosing fetus gender. In 2014, the city withdrew the license of a clinic for the same violation. So far this year, one doctor has been fined for the violation.