Vegetable farming in Bạc Liêu Province. The province has provided soft loans to poor households for business or farming purposes to help them escape poverty. – VNA/VNS Photo Tuấn Kiệt

BẠC LIÊU – The Cửu Long (Mekong) Delta province of Bạc Liêu has reduced the number of poor households to 842, or 1.45 per cent of the province’s total households, by providing soft loans, vocational skills, and sustainable livelihood models to the poor.

Đoàn Kiều Trang, whose family in Giá Rai Town’s Phong Tân Commune was poor, received help to build a new house and was given a soft loan early this year to breed eel, frogs, chickens and ducks.

Đỗ Minh Thắng, chairman of the Giá Rai People’s Committee, said: "Members of poor households who do not have farmland are provided vocational skills to find stable jobs. Members of poor households who have farmland but lack money are provided soft loans for farming."

The town has promoted the role of its Fatherland Front Committee and has called on individuals and philanthropic organisations to help poor households.

The Việt Nam Bank for Social Policies’ (VBSP) Bạc Liêu branch provided a total of 2.28 trillion (US$99 million) soft loans to 110,000 households who are poor or near-poor, or who have had economic difficulty this year.

The province also assigned officials and Party members to help poor households. This year it built 162 houses for poor and near-poor households from funds for social security and the poor.

Individuals and philanthropic organisations built 72 houses for poor, near-poor households and households with economic difficulties this year.

The province has also provided health insurance cards to all poor and near-poor households.

Under the Government’s new multidimensional poverty line for 2022 – 25, the province has 9,640 poor households, accounting for 4.27 per cent of total households, and 14,226 near - poor households, accounting for 6.31 per cent.

Under the guidelines, a household is poor if it has a monthly per capita income of VNĐ1.5 million ($65) or lower in rural areas and VNĐ2 million ($87) or lower in urban areas.

Phạm Văn Thiều, chairman of the province People’s Committee, said to reduce poverty sustainably, the province targets reducing its poverty rate by 1 – 1.5 per cent next year.

The province will focus on providing jobs for 28,000 labourers who returned to the province from other cities and provinces during the fourth COVID wave in the country. It will also provide jobs for poor labourers and act as a link between companies and the unemployed. – VNS