The family of Thach Con in Long Hiep commune of Tra Cu district, Tra Vinh province, escapes from poverty in 2020 thanks to preferential loans for cattle raising. (Photo: VNA) Tra Vinh (VNA) – The Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh will spend 1.4 trillion VND (64.2 million USD) on projects which aim at improving ethnic minority people’s living conditions over the next three years.
The sum, mobilised from central and local government resources and others, will be used to build infrastructure in areas where ethnic minority people reside, help poor people set up businesses or carry out agricultural production in sustainable methods and enhance the quality of human resources. It will also seek to improve health care services and promote traditional values of ethnic minority people in association with tourism development.
The province targets to raise the average income of ethnic communities to 80 million VND per person per year by 2025. The number of poor ethnic minority households will also be reduced by 3-4 percent each year. It will no longer have extremely difficult communes.
The plan also envisages upgrading traffic infrastructure in communes and villages inhabited by ethnic minority groups, and asphalting or concreting main roads, while schools and medical centres will be upgraded. The province will connect ethnic minority households with the national power grid or other available power sources. Most of the ethnic minority people have access to clean water and take part in the health insurance scheme by 2025.
It will also assist ethnic minority families in terms of land for housing as well as for their farming production. Officials and civil servants will receive training on ethnic minority-related affairs.
Tra Vinh is home to nearly 328,000 Khmer people, accounting for 31.5 percent of the province’s population.
Kien Ninh, head of the provincial Committee for Ethnic Affairs, said the province has allocated 2.1 trillion VND from the central and provincial budgets to build 685 infrastructure works.
Nearly 4,000 Khmer households were supported in promoting production activities, diversifying livelihoods and expanding models for poverty reduction.
The province has provided soft loans for 1,500 poor households to do business and subsidised construction of projects to help more than 15,000 households access clean water.
According to the multi-dimensional approach poverty standards in the 2016-2020 period, Tra Vinh had only 1,650 poor households by the end of last year, a decrease of 3,554 households from 2020’s figure. However, in line with the standard for 2022-2025, it has 10,207 poor families, accounting for 3.56 percent of the total number./.
