Half a million poor households in rural areas will receive support to improve their housing conditions under a new proposal just submitted to the Government for approval by the Ministry of Construction.

The proposal lines out different types of support from the State budget for specific groups of beneficiaries in the second phase of a State policy on housing support for the needy.

A total of 18.4 trillion VND (1.15 billion USD) will be needed to carry out the plan, which aims to improve the poor’s living standards and contribute to sustainable poverty reduction.

The money will be sourced from the central and local budgets, preferential loans and contribution from the whole community, including the target people.

Under the plan, each beneficiary household will receive aid in cash ranging from 5-14 million VND depending on their specific situation and local conditions, as well as preferential loans to build or upgrade their house that should be resistant to floods and storms.

The target of this plan are poor people not entitled to other housing support programmes which are being or will be carried out, such as the scheme on building flood-proof residential areas in the Mekong Delta, the resettlement programme for residents living in disaster-prone and poor areas, and the building of flood-proof houses for poor people in the central region.

Local statistics showed that there are about 510,000 households facing accommodation difficulties in the 2101-2015 period.

According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the rate of poor households in Vietnam has dropped from 22 percent in 2005 to 7.8 percent last year.-VNA