Poor communes get facelift with national programme

A street in Tan Son district, Phu Tho province. (Source: geolocation.ws)

Phu Tho (VNA) – Infrastructure, production methods and the living conditions of local residents in extremely disadvantaged communes in the northern province of Phu Tho have significantly improved thanks to investments from the National Programme 135.

An example illustrating that improvement is Tan Son district, one of the 63 poorest districts in Vietnam, has improved in many areas after it got an investment of 91 billion VND (4 million USD) from the programme.

With the investment, the district has built 113 infrastructure facilities and carried out maintenance on 21 others. As of now, all communes in the district under the programme have paved roads leading to their administrative area.

The rate of poverty in the district has dropped to 24.43 percent in 2015.

According to Dinh Ngoc Thanh, Head of the province’s Ethnic Affairs Committee, from 2011-2015, the province has invested 485 billion VND (21.3 million USD) in implementing two electricity projects, 1,019 road projects, 214 irrigation works, 258 schools, rooms and housing for teachers, 16 health centres, 367 culture houses and two markets.

The remaining capital was used to repair and upgrade 129 facilities and provide aid to production projects.

The implementation of projects also helped improve the management and execution capabilities of the politic system at all levels, especially commune-level governments.

Ethnic minority groups also changed their production practices and techniques toward sellable goods production.

The Government’s Programme 135, which was launched in 1999 under the Prime Minister’s Decision 135/1998/QD-TTg on July 31, 1998, aims to improve living conditions for rural residents with a particular focus on ethnic minority communities.-VNA