590,000 "poor hats" to be removed during 13th Five-Year Plan

The pastoralist Dundrup in the county of Palbarin Qamdocity, Tibet has a serious bone structure disease that and has an annual income of only four or five thousand RMB, daily life is a bit tough. Getting out of poverty and living a better-off life is a dream that Dundrup has had for years.

Tibet is the only province in the country that is an area of concentrated poverty with land conditions and disease being the main causes. However, in the coming five years, 590,000 people that can be included in a group of people that share Dundrup’s story, have some hope of ridding of the poverty hat and making the transition into a lifestyle that is more well-off.

In order to be victorious in the war on poverty, in parallel with implementation nationwide of comprehensive better-off society, the Tibet Autonomous Region Party Committee and government have indicated that during the 13th Five-Year plan they will standardly implement and guarantee total alleviation of poverty for 590,000 people, that means total alleviation of poverty for the countryside population, the total ridding of impoverished counties and furthermore total alleviation of regional poverty, thereby bringing poverty rates down to below 5%, and therein, the impoverished population will experience a 16% or higher growth in annual income.

 “During the 12th Five-Year Plan, Tibet gradually established poverty improvement policies, special aid-to-poor projects, industry aid-to-poor projects, social aid-to-poor projects, the Tibet-Aid projects, industry aid-to-poor projects and other aid-to-poor models, therein in total aid-to-poor finances totaled to 9.19 billion RMB, making for a 2.5 increase from that seen during the 11th Five-Year plan. Under the powerful assurance of aid-to-poor models and finance investment, 580,000 Tibetans have been raised above the poverty line and poverty alleviation effortshave stabilized.

Yet Tibet aid-to-poor work still faces the problems of a principally large poor population, concentrated poor areas, poverty in some parts being prominent, deep degrees of poverty, not to mention the phenomena of common return to poverty as well as relative poverty also being prominent. For this, during the 13th Five-Year plan, Tibet will intensify aid-to-poor, and through improving of assault institutions, implementing aid-to-poor measures, and planning as a whole to phase out aid-to-poor, and implementing measures to develop an accountability system for aid-to-poor goal management, the creation of a large aid-to-poor scheme, and implementing poverty alleviation for the entire population while also assuring three basic things for the poor population (ample food, water and shelter), and the three must haves (having skills, having work and having money to spend), and the three guarantees (protocol education, basic health-care and social assurance).

The secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region aid-to-poor Ju Ling indicated that Tibet will make the cities of Shigatse, Qamdo and Nagqu, which account for 74.39% of the districts poor population, into aid-to-poor work focal areas. The effort will solve problems of poverty alleviation amongst the impoverished population through projects, industries, settlement, movement, employment, skills and Tibet-aid as well as aid-to-poor work stationed in villages.

According to what was understood, according to the accurate concept of the aid-to-poor, aid-to-poor measures should be broken up and advanced. Implementation of aid and support for employment shifts or the poor population able to do labor that is specially developed, especially important ecology implementing ecological protection oriented aid-to-poor, and for those that lack labor skills or because of study poverty, training and relief are to be implemented, and for those that are poor because of being sick assurance of medical fee relief aid will be offered, and for those that lost labor abilitiestransparent assurance policies will be implemented, and will decrease policy assurance and aid-to-poor policy integration challenges.All in all they should actually relief what should be relieved and assure what should be assured. 

Other than this, Tibet will also solve problems of water, electricity, roads and communications amongst other things, all kinds of basic facility problems, and expand the coverage sweep of basic facilities in poverty areas; improve education, medicine, employment and social assurance service levels and quality, and furthermore promote basic public services equality in all poor areas.