Anti-poverty drive targets Lao hilltribes
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Laos lawmakers have set aside 217 billion kip (about Bt841.9 million) for rural development and poverty alleviation next fiscal year.
Laos’ parliament approved the funds on Friday as it adopted socio-economic development and budget plans for the next fiscal year.
The approved funds will aid efforts to reduce the proportion of poverty-stricken families in Laos from the current estimated 14.8 per cent to less than 10 per cent by 2015, as part of the bid to achieve Millennium Development Goals.
The poverty-alleviation scheme includes an initiative of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party to create cluster villages by resettling and amalgamating small isolated communities, especially those located in mountainous areas.
Lawmakers asked the government to work at creating permanent jobs for hilltribe and other ethnic-minority people, giving them an alternative to subsistence slash-and-burn farming. The government has set a target of resettling all nomadic farmers in sustainable local livelihoods by 2015.
However, such a goal was rather ambitious given the current shortage of funds, chairman of the National Leading Committee for Rural Development and Poverty Eradication, Bounheuang Duangphachanh, said recently.
