Thai Nguyen: Over VND5.1 trln for sustainable poverty reduction

Of the total amount, VND1.5 trillion (US$66 million) will come from State budget while the remainder will be mobilised from provincial budget and other legal financial resources.

The province is targeting to reduce the number of poor households by 2% per year by 2020. Meanwhile, the proportion of impoverished households in specially disadvantaged communes must be slashed by 3.5-5% per year.

Under the programme, the locality is also striving to have all of its poor and near poor receive vocational training and get access to healthcare insurance. In addition, all of the deprived families must have accommodations and 95% of the destitute people have hygiene water.

According to Trinh Viet Hung, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, the programme is synchronised with a line-up of multidimensional measures which help the poor access to basic services.

Those include providing vocational training in companion with job creation to ensure 80% of the trainees have jobs and facilitating conditions for labourers to work in local industrial parks, craft villages or in foreign countries, he said.

The province pays due attention to implementing preferential credit schemes and building practical models to encourage agriculture, forestry and fishery. Besides, it will allocate financial resources to carry out at least five sustainable poverty reduction programmes every year, develop essential infrastructure in difficulty-ridden communes and stabilise production in villages inhabited by ethnic minority groups.

According to recent evaluation from the provincial People’s Committee, the locality has 42,000 poor households, accounting for 13.4% of total households, and over 28,000 near poor families, making up of 9% of total households.

During 2011-2016, some VND6 trillion (US$264.4 million) was mobilised for poverty alleviation programmes and projects, helping 36,000 families escape from poverty and drop poverty rate by 2.7% per year.

However, the programme still has some limitations, including accommodation support failing to meet set plan, poor households shifting to near poor households and disparity between number of poor households in urban areas and mountainous districts.