President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front's Central Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan speaks at a meeting with Khmer dignitaries in Hau Giang on the occasion of traditional Chol Chnam Thmay festival (Photo: VNA) Hau Giang (VNA) – The Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang will continue supporting local Khmer people through organising festivals and providing capital for economic development.
Huynh Van Hung, vice president of the provincial chapter of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, said that the province will also continue running communication models for law education among the community, while assisting them in vocational training and agricultural production.
Hau Giang is home to some 26,000 Khmer people, making up more than 3 percent of the province’s population. In 2016, the province implemented a poverty reduction programme among the Khmer community in 29 villages with total investment of more than 7.5 billion VND.
The province also provided 4.5 billion VND to help nearly 180 Khmer families build houses and buy land for production, while constructing rural roads and kindergartens in Khmer people-majority districts such as Long My and Phung Hiep.
The province has nearly 30,000 poor households, more than 14 percent of total households, including about 2,000 Khmer families.
Meanwhile, the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang has seen improvements in living conditions of local Khmer people thanks to support programmes and new infrastructure.
Danh Ngoc Hung, head of the provincial Committee for Ethnic Affairs, said the province has focused on upgrading infrastructure in eight communes under the Government’s programme on poverty reduction, including five border localities.
By the end of 2016, Nam Thai, Thanh Yen A and Vinh Phu communes were eligible to get rid of the programme in 2017.
Meanwhile, living conditions for locals in five other communes in Giang Thanh district have improved.
Last year, Kien Giang disbursed more than 200 billion VND (8.82 million USD) to help Khmer people expand production and upgrade infrastructure, while credit institutions also provided nearly 474 billion VND (20.9 million USD) in loans for the needy families.
At the same time, 19 billion VND was used to provide clean water to more than 10,000 Khmer families, while 45 billion VND was spent on building power transmission lines for over 2,430 households, thus reducing poverty ratio to 15.64 percent from 19.88 percent in 2015.
In 2016, Kien Giang also built Go Quao and An Bien boarding schools for Khmer children, while opening 293 Khmer writing classes for Khmer people during summer.-VNA
VNA
