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Ho Chi Minh City’s anti-poverty drive faces with challenges 16th July 2008
Saigon's poverty reduction program now is facing with challenges as
inflation and poor infrastructure are hitting the poor, heard a meeting
on poverty reduction between the city's People's Council and Nha Be
District last week.
Along with inflation, poor infrastructure is hammering the poor.
Nguyen Van Tien, chairman of Nha Be District's People's Committee, said
at the meeting that with the inflation of 18.44% so far this year, the
poor who have annually income of VND6 million now are living under high
pressure. Adding the woes is the soaring prices of food because over 40%
poor people's income is spent on food.
"Some 5% of those people considered to have escaped poverty in Nha Be
District have fallen back under the poverty line," Tien said.
Nha Be District's authorities reported that in the first six months of
this year, the district had 4,266 families listed as poor people. Tien
explained that inflation and ineffective credit aid program were the
main reasons causing the poverty reduction program to slow down.
According to Tien, many poor people who want to borrow capital for
family business are facing with difficulties when borrowing capital from
the city's credit aid program.
"Complicated borrowing procedure is bringing hardships for the poor. And
the loosening cooperation between banks and the district authorities are
also causing a waste of time for the poor," he said.
Along with inflation, poor infrastructure is hammering the poor.
Long Thoi, now considered the poorest commune in Nha Be District, only
has two small-scale water supply facilities supplying tap water to local
residents. In summer season, local residents are suffering from a severe
shortage of water.
The commune has only one asphalted road serving for transportation,
while many infrastructure projects in the pipeline have now been
suspended, causing big problems for poor people.
Tien recommended the city government revise poverty standard because the
standard applicable since 2005 has become outdated due to inflation. In
HCMC, people who have annually income of VND6 million are listed as the
poor.
Recently, the city's Steering Committee for Poverty Reduction has
conducted a survey among 279 poor families living in the city. Around
91.7% of respondents said that they suffered greatly from soaring
prices.
In the past three months, they have to increase expenditure for daily
food consumption by around 1.5-2 times compared to the same period of
last year. Last year, the city had 17,033 poor families, accounting for
1.37% of the city's total number of families.
Source: VNS
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