Ca Mau wants to reduce poverty rate by 0.3 percentage points this year

Ca Mau (VNA) - The Mekong Delta province of Ca Mau targets a 0.3 percentage point reduction in the poverty rate this year, according to its Fatherland Front Committee.

Phan Mong Thanh, Deputy Chairman of the Committee, said poor households would be carefully identified together with socio-political and religious organisations, and specific measures would be taken to help every poor and near-poor household escape poverty.

The measures include helping them carry out small trade, breed animals or grow crops, he said. 

The number of poor households had reduced from 9.94 percent in 2016 to 2.25 percent at the end of 2019, but they still number more than 10,900.

To help the poor household escape poverty sustainably, the Fatherland Front Committee plans to mobilise resources from society through the Fund for the Poor and the Social Welfare Fund for welfare policies.

Each grassroots level branch of all socio-political and other organisations will help one poor or near-poor household escape poverty, or help prevent a newly escaped one fall back into poverty.

Last year more than 3,000 households escaped poverty, exceeding the target set by the People’s Committee by 11 percent.

Of the 3,000, 2,400 were assisted by the Fatherland Front Committee and other organisations.

Thanh said to achieve this, the families were helped with production or business and obtaining soft loans for the purpose.

The Fatherland Front Committee has mobilised more than 71 billion VND (3 million USD) for the fund and used it to build 84 rural bridges, build or repair 1,941 houses belonging to the poor, drill 92 wells, give 26,000 gifts and donate nearly 130 tonnes of rice, and provide health checks and medicines for 12,000 poor people since the beginning.
 
Around 77 percent of the province’s population lives in rural areas and 56.7 percent of its workforce is in agriculture, according to the local Department of Agriculture and Rural Development./.