The Vinh Long provincial People’s Committee on June 11 presented poor households with 330 houses funded by the Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank) in 2013.

The gifts, worth a combined 10.65 billion VND (over 502,000 USD), show the province’s efforts in mobilising all possible resources to support local poor households.

The southern locality set a target of cutting the rate of poor households by 1.3 percent in 2014, striving to mobilise 150 billion VND (7.07 million USD) donated by organisations and businesses to implement social programmes focusing on providing poor and near-poor households with housing support and health insurance cards.

It has been collaborating with VietinBank to promote the bank’s 15.5 billion VND (around 738,000 USD) funding package to build another 350 houses for poor locals this year, of which 132 were already completed.

The funding has also been used to build some classrooms for Son Ca nursery school in Vinh Long city and provide medical equipment for the city’s general hospital.

Vinh Long now has 12,623 poor households, or 4.57 percent of the total number of local households, and 13,566 near-poor households, 4.92 percent.

It is striving to expand various social activities and programmes, with priority given to vocational training, job generation, production development and housing support.-VNA