703 – Talk Vietnam

Can Tho city has encouraged farmers to switch to high-value crops on low-yield rice fields, enabling many poor households to escape poverty. (Photo: VNA) Can Tho (VNA) - The Mekong Delta city of Can Tho plans to spend 703 billion VND (30.6 million USD) this year on poverty alleviation measures . The money, to come from the central and local governments, soft loans and other sources, will be used to provide poor households with all basic social services and improve their incomes. They will include support policies and programmes related to healthcare, education, vocational training, soft loans, and job and poverty reduction models to help poor and near-poor people. Loans worth 640 billion VND (27.8 million USD) will be provided to 12,974 poor and near – poor households and those that have newly escaped poverty to do business. The city will provide free health insurance cards to 3,090 poor and ethnic people living in disadvantaged areas, and 34,729 near-poor people, ensuring that this demographic is covered 100 percent. It will provide scholarships or reduce or waive school fees for 1,870 poor students, and vocational training and jobs for 750 poor and near-poor people . It will expand 48 successful poverty reduction models, and carry out agriculture extension programmes to benefit 150 poor and near-poor households. The city has implemented various policies and programmes in recent years to enable poor households to escape poverty sustainably. Last year it built 485 houses, gifted 43,556 health insurance cards to poor and near – poor households and provided soft loans worth a total of 648 billion VND (28.1 million USD) to poor and near - poor households. More than 44,900 poor and near-poor households received 33.7 billion VND (1.5 million USD) worth of Government subsidies to overcome the impacts of the COVID- 19 pandemic. The city reduced its poverty rate by 0.37 percentage points and had only 1,036 poor households last year, …