Gia Lai Province Pushes Ahead with Poverty Eradication

The Central Highlands province of Gia Lai is stepping up poverty reduction efforts in the last quarter so as to cut the household poverty rate by 2.6% this year. To that end, local authorities will continue to survey poor and near-poor families and provide training for those in charge of poverty reduction. They will coordinate with relevant agencies to build houses for the poor and realize related policies such as those on health insurance, education and housing, the provincial administration said. The province will promote relevant drives such as Program 135 on supporting infrastructure and production development in disadvantaged communes; the program on sustainable poverty reduction in the Central Highlands; the agriculture, farmers and rural areas support project of the International Fund for Agricultural Development ; and other activities aiming to improve the targeted group’s livelihoods. Appropriate measures have been taken to help local residents escape from poverty under the national target program on sustainable poverty reduction during the first nine months of 2016, authorities said, noting that different poverty eradication policies, programs and projects have been combined so as to maximize assistance for the impoverished. As a result, most of the targeted people have accessed the State-initiated support while infrastructure in remote areas has gained a facelift, they added. There were more than 64,000 deprived households in Gia Lai, making up 19.71% of the province’s population, according to a 2015 survey. More than 53,000, or 83.59%, of the poor households were from ethnic minority groups. Particularly, ethnic minority families accounted for more than 90% of the total deprived households in Kong Chro, Chu Se and Dak Doa districts. In the national target program on sustainable poverty reduction between 2016 and 2020, Vietnam t argets an annual decrease of 1%-1.5% in the rate of low-income households under the multidimensional poverty measurement. With the old poverty line, the household poverty rate was 4.25% by the end of 2015, a sharp drop from 14.2% in 2010. Average per capita income of poor households increased 1.6 times over that in 2011. (vietnamplus.vn Oct 18)