Khmer people at a festival (Source: VNA)The Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang has implemented a number of socio-economic development policies in recent years with the aim to raise the living standards of the local Khmer people.
Since 2010, the province has spent 300 billion USD (13.6 million USD) on providing livelihood support, vocational training and soft loans for production as well as building infrastructure and water supply facilities for thousands of Khmer households, according to Danh Ngoc Hung, Head of the provincial Religious Committee.
Kien Giang currently has five ethnic minority boarding schools serving about 1,400 ethnic students each year. About 500 classes are available in Khmer-inhabited areas, providing lessons in the Khmer language for over 12,000 students.
About 8,800 impoverished households and over 34,000 people in disadvantaged and remote communes have been provided with health insurance worth 27 billion VND (1.22 million USD).
The province also spent 160 billion VND (7.2 million USD) to restore and build Khmer pagodas, places of worship and public cultural constructions.
The Khmer household poverty rate has fallen to 7.41 percent from 18.53 percent in 2010 and the rates of households accessing the power network and using sanitary water are 95.95 and 76 percent, respectively.
Kien Giang is now home to over 51,000 Khmer ethnic minority households, accounting for 12.5 percent of the province’s population.-VNA
