Wudang invests $8.05m to speed up poverty reduction

To lift all people out of poverty, Wudang district in Guiyang -- capital city of Southwest China's Guizhou province -- is focusing on tackling the poorer areas in the local agricultural industry, in rural education and the poorer residential areas, according to local officials.

They said Wudang has allocated a total of 56.39 million yuan ($8.05m) to its budget for poverty alleviation this year.

Of this, 34.84 million yuan has been distributed to agricultural production developments, rural infrastructure construction and improvements to the poor residential areas, as well as to education and medical treatment.

Officials said Wudang continues to implement a policy of increasing agricultural income.

It has reduced the inefficient crops by 693.6 hectares, but increased the vegetable planting area by 4,806 hectares and cultivated 1,759.67 hectares of Chinese herbal medicine and 896.13 hectares of tea.

In terms of boosting employment to alleviate poverty, Wudang plans to offer 4,823 jobs for locals in difficulty this year -- of which 1,435 people were employed, while another 617 poverty-stricken people were placed at public welfare posts and poverty relief assistant posts.

Since the start of the year, Wudang has allocated 4.33 million yuan to the education of 6,242 students in poverty from pre-school to high-school. Officials said it will further carry out an educational subsidy policy to avoid drop-outs and ensure the adequate education of rural students. 

Meanwhile, in Wudang, 3,545 out of the 3,648 registered poverty-stricken people in the district have been included in urban and rural residents health insurance.

In addition, Wudang has completed the reconstruction of 55 dangerous houses and will continue to check rural housing to clean up more dangerous houses which have poor and old ventilation and leak during rain storms, to avoid housing crisis.

Moving forwards, Wudang will take further measures to promote rural industrial development, including strengthening the construction of rural infrastructure and improving rural sanitation and basic public services.

In addition, it will further implement its strategy of rural revitalization to consolidate the achievements of poverty relief.