On November 12th, 2014, the Hue city Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee held a workshop with title “votive offerings – history and current issues of concern” to assess the situation and find solutions to reduce the burning of votive offerings in Hue city – a city has been named as an environmentally sustainable city of ASEAN.
According to experts at the workshop, the use of votive offerings has been deformed to an alarming rate. Modern votive offerings such as cars, motorbikes, smart phones (iphone, ipad…), US dollar…have been used widely. Traditional votive offerings at the funeral ceremonies and ancestral worshiping rituals wasted from tens to hundreds of VNĐ miliions.
According to statistics cited by the Department of Economics of Hue city, there are 226 suppliers of votive products, recruiting about 356 employees and creating an annual revenue estimated at 50-60 billion VNĐ.
Meanwhile, according to a survey by the Vietnam Institute of Cultural Studies in Hue, on 4 businesses supplying votive products, each business produced an average of 2.5 tons of paper monthly and some times did not met the actual demand. According to an assessment of this institute, production and trade of votive offerings has gradually been regarded as handicraft industry in Hue and brought huge profits.
Speaking at the workshop, Mr. Nguyễn Đăng Thạnh, Vice-Chairman of the Hue city People’s Committee reported that in recent years the Hue city People’s Committee has carried out many advocacy measures and propaganda encouraging people to reduce the burning of votive offerings.
Meanwhile, according to Mr. Nguyễn Đăng Thắng, Head of Division of Culture and Information of Hue city, the legal provisions of the Government and the Ministry of Culture - Sports and Tourism are not specific enough and impractical, so detailed regulations are needed to regulate the burning of votive offerings by organizations, officials and households./.
Phương Thủy
