The northern province of Quang Ninh on April 19 launched a campaign to support communes suffering extreme difficulties to rise up from poverty as part of its new-style rural area building program in 2016. At the launching ceremony, organizations and individuals in the locality registered to donate a total of nearly VND30 billion (about $1.3 million) for the effort. On the occasion, Deputy Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Dang Huy Hau called on officials and public servants in the province to contribute one day’s salary to support the program. Quang Ninh is now home to 22 extremely disadvantaged communes and 11 hamlets. In the past few years, the province focused on improving public infrastructure in the disadvantaged communes. So far, all roads to the centre of those communes have been asphalted, as well as 95% of households have had access to national grid and about 85% have been able to use clean water. However, there is still a big socio-economic gap between extremely disadvantaged communes and other localities in the province. The annual per capita income in those 22 communes reaches only VND11.71 million ($510), about 7.4 times lower than that of the province’s average per capita income. The number of poor and nearly-poor households is 9,802, accounting for 63.57% of the total population. Quang Ninh aims to bring all the 22 extremely disadvantaged communes and 11 hamlets out of poverty by 2020. The province will mobilize VND1.65 trillion to accomplish the goals under Government Program135, designed for the extremely disadvantaged communes from 2016 to 2020. Government Program 135, launched in 1999 under the Prime Minister's Decision 135/1998/QD-TTg on July 31, 1998, aims to improve the living conditions for rural residents in the most disadvantaged communes across the country with a focus on ethnic communities. (vietnamplus.vn Apr 19)
