Catholic Women ‘Move Mountains’ To Support Their Children
26/6/08
Amid rising prices of food and other basic needs, Catholic women in a northern parish are working hard in quarries to support their children. Five state-run and private companies are mining white rock from hills around a large lake supplying water to Thac Ba Hydroelectric Plant. Those quarries, in Yen Bai province’s Mong Son village, 220 kilometers north of Ha Noi, employ women from Mong Son and other local villages to load rocks for shipment. About 2,500 of Mong Son’s 3,000 residents are Catholics. They form half the membership of the parish based in the village, which covers an area that is home to 150,000 people. One day in June, in 38-degree-Celsius heat under a scorching sun, hundreds of women workers were handing heavy white rocks down a line to one another for loading onto trucks and boats. “We know that carrying rocks is hard physical labor that can damage our health, but we must do it to support our families, because there are no other jobs here,” Maria Dinh Thi Lien told UCA News as she wiped the sweat from her face.
See: http://www.ucanews.com/2008/06/26/catholic-women-move-mountains-to-support-their-children/