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Premier Wen calls for further efforts to help the poor Updated: 2012-05-28 10:14:30 Wu Jiayu, an 88-year-old farmer from Central China s Hunanprovince, never expected that Premier Wen Jiabao's work schedulewould include sitting in his shabby house and asking him and hisfellow villagers what the government can do to improve theirlivelihoods. But over the last weekend, the unimaginable happened. From May 25 to 27, Wen went to villages in the Xiangxi Tujiaand Miao autonomous prefecture in Hunan province to study howpoverty has affected local people's lives and how the governmentcan pull them out of their economic plight. Farmers told Wen that although starvation is no longer aproblem, low incomes and a weak social security network create manychallenges, such as being unable to afford the cost of treatmentfor serious diseases at hospitals. Wen urged local officials to improve infrastructure to boostthe local tourism industry, as well as carry out more waterconservancy projects to reduce the harm caused by naturaldisasters. He also stressed that the prefecture's government should workhard to expand the coverage of basic social services to morepeople. "We must concentrate on enhancing the quality of medicalservices in community-based and village-based clinics andhospitals," he said. In addition, he asked local authorities to improve the teachingconditions in rural schools, with more attention on improving theaccommodation and dining facilities for students in remote areas. The central and provincial governments will guaranteesufficient funds for the region to reduce poverty, Wen pledged. The autonomous prefecture has been mapped into the Wulingyuanmountainous region, one of the 11 major battlefields againstpoverty in the country's latest 10-year (2011-2020) strategy onpoverty alleviation and development. Official figures showed that more than 1 million ruralresidents in the prefecture were poverty-stricken, and lived on anannual net income of less than 1,196 yuan ($188.5) a nationalpoverty line set in 2009. The prefecture's poor population isestimated to increase dramatically since the central governmentraised the poverty standard to 2,300 yuan last year. The poverty reduction work remains challenging in areasinhabited by ethnic groups, said Wang Xiaolin, director of theresearch division of the International Poverty Reduction Center inChina. He told China Daily on Sunday that ethnic groups usually livein remote and mountainous regions with harsh natural conditions andpoor traffic connections with the outside world. As a result, these areas are often less developed with amassive population struggling with poverty. Hampered by poor educational resources, these areas lackcompetitive work forces to export to urban areas, Wang said. As most ethnic groups have unique languages or dialects,language barriers set back less-educated villagers from thoseethnic groups that migrate to big cities for better-paying jobs toimprove their families' lives, he explained. Xinhua contributed to this story.(China Daily). I am an expert from exhibition-boothdisplay.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Hanging Banner Display , Modular Trade Show Booth, Modular Booth Systems,and more.
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