Quang Ninh harbours pockets of extreme poverty

The northern province of Quang Ninh, with its world-famous tourism destinations like Ha Long Bay, has recorded significant economic progress in recent decades, but pockets of extreme poverty remain.

Scattered population density has affected infrastructure development in the mountainous commune of Dong Van in Binh Lieu District. — Photo quangninh.gov.vn

Despite several investment and other support programmes being implemented in the mountainous commune of Dong Van in Bình Liêu District, the residents are still very poor.

The commune has nine villages, eight of which are in dire difficulties. In many places, there are no roads and residents are completely isolated when rains inundate the area.

The poorest locality in the area, Phat Chi Village, is located about 37km away from Binh Lieu Township. There are 31 households living here, all of them belonging to the Dao ethnic minority community. Of these, 25 are poor and six are near-poor households, said Ly Van Binh, Chairman of Dong Van Commune.

The families eke out a living on scarce forest resources.

Like many others in the village, Tang Dau Lenh lives with his family’s other six members in a 40sq.m house. They have 2,400sq.m of rice and maize fields, two pigs and some chicken.

Every day, Lenh goes to the forest to pick bamboo shoots, catch honeycombs or frogs, and sometimes, he works as a hired labourer, cutting down trees.

For all the hard work he does, the highest income he can earn is VNĐ300,000 (US$13) a day. The average daily income is about VNĐ100,000-150,000. Then there are days he cannot earn any money.

His wife often goes to work illegally in China, and returns after a few days or even months.

According to the Binh Lieu Distrit People’s Committee, they had 2,449 poor households and 1,229 near-poor households in 2016.

In Dong Van and Huc Dong communes, poor households accounted for 50 per cent, with the percentage as high as 90 per cent in some villages.

Binh said a lack of capital and land for production were the main reasons behind the high rate of poverty.

In the mountainous commune of Dong Van, 538 of 658 households are poor, and 135 are near-poor.

Scattered population density has affected infrastructure development of the region, Binh said, noting that several households do not have electricity in their homes.

Productivity in breeding livestock and in farming has remained low because of difficulties in applying modern technology, Binh added.

The programme to reduce poverty and build new-style rural areas in Binh Lieu District has not been as effective as hoped, he said.

Hoang Ngoc Ngo, deputy chairman of the district’s People’s Committee and head of the Steering Committee for Poverty Reduction also affirmed that several programmes implemented in the district in general and in Dong Van commune in particular have not borne the desired fruit.

The most pressing issue was how to promote production, change local people’s awareness on poverty reduction efforts, vocational training and job creation, he said.

For many years, the main source of income for local residents has been anise and cinnamon, which is cultivated over 2,000 hectares, one-third of the commune’s natural land area, the Nong Thon Ngay Nay (Countryside Today) newspaper reported recently.

However, the yield of these plants and trees has constantly fallen over the past five years and no one knows why, the report said.

It noted that very few enterprises have invested in agriculture in the area. Just one co-operative has taken up cold-water fish farming and another does small-scale planting and processing of radish, the newspaper reported.

Earlier this year, Binh Lieu District launched its sustainable poverty reduction programme for the 2017-2020 period. Dong Van Commune is waiting approval from authorised agencies for its plan to bring poor villages out of the extreme difficulties and fulfill the objectives of National Programme 135, which focuses on poverty reduction.

Under the plan, eight villages in the commune will escape extreme poverty by the end of 2019.

Source: VNS