The new multi-dimension poverty standards, planned to apply in the period of 2016-2020, will help the fight against poverty be more effective, according to Truong Thi Mai, head of the National Assembly’s Committee on Social Affairs.

The updated standards will help measure the shortage in basic needs such as access to education, health care besides the living conditions, thus allowing local authorities to allocate resources in a more appropriate manner, she said at a workshop on multi-dimension poverty standards and social welfare policy, held in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong on March 6.

Other delegates at the meeting said that the new approach should achieve three goals: measuring the shortage; supervising poverty alleviation and policy adaptation; and determining poor households and beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, Ngo Dinh Thi, Chief of the Office of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, reported the process of adopting the new poverty standards in line with the National Assembly resolution 76/2014/QH13, highlighting the difficulties and challenges that arose during the process.

For ethnic minority areas, Nguyen Cao Thinh, deputy head of the General Affairs Department under the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs, proposed nine groups of actions that should be taken. He asked for the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs to coordinate in devising specific goals for poverty reduction for ethnic minority groups as well as in supervising the implementation process.

The workshop was held under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the United Nations’ Development Programme and Ireland’s Embassy in Vietnam.-VNA