City aids areas in fight against poverty
Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, has advanced the rural industrial revolution and launched a series of assistance projects to lift impoverished areas out of poverty, said local officials.
Chen Yan, mayor of Guiyang, said the city has implemented six major assistance projects driven by its industries, markets, education, medical care, and cadre mutual aid. The city has got rid of poverty by the end of 2019,
Since 2016, the local government has set up poverty-alleviation funds of 1.83 billion yuan ($282 million), with a total of 458 poverty assistance projects. The city has lifted 510,000 people out of poverty and removed 13 counties out of the poverty list in Guizhou over the past five years, he said.
In Babu village, Jiaona town of Wangmo county, Qianxinan Buyi and Miao autonomous prefecture in Guizhou province, purple-red tea trees grow bountifully as the mountain breeze blows. In the tea garden, machines are chiming as more than 10 villagers weed with agricultural tools such as weeders and sickles.
Wang Hong, the legal representative of the village’s farmers’ professional cooperative, said since the tea industry has been developed in the town, many villagers who went out to work have chosen to return home and start their own businesses.
“Villagers can earn 300 yuan in dividends per mu each year, and can collect daily labor fees ranging from 100 to 120 yuan depending on the type of work,” Wang said.
In 2018, Guanshanhu district in Guiyang assisted Jiaona town with poverty alleviation.
The district helped the town with projects, employment, education and medical care. The district has invested 7.35 million yuan in special assistance funds to help the town’s industrial development since 2018.
With the multifaceted support of Guanshanhu district, the town currently has 17 professional farmer cooperatives participating in tea seedling planting and 68 tea seedling planting points, a total of 13 professional farmer cooperatives in seedling cultivation and 34 seedling growing points.
“With the help of the district, our town has reduced the poverty rate from 41.76 percent in 2014 to 1.24 percent in 2020,” said Liu Jiajun, deputy Party secretary of Jiaona town.
The city has built nine relocation sites for poverty alleviation. More than 3,000 households with 12,090 people have been moved out of the impoverished mountains and settled in cities and towns.
It also encourages leading enterprises to build planting and breeding bases of vegetables, fungi, pigs, cows and fishery in impoverished areas.
One example is Guiyang Agricultural Investment Development’s vegetable base project of more than 33,000 hectares covering 36 counties in nine cities in Guizhou. It has helped 150,000 farmers increase their incomes.
Guiyang supported the company to construct a standardized 600,000bird breeding base in Wangmo county, with a total investment of 150 million yuan. “I used to be farming at home, and I didn’t have much income. Now I come to the base to work, and I can earn 3,500 yuan a month,” said Peng Falan, a 33-yearold local villager. Peng works at the chicken breeding base and is responsible for picking out damaged and dirty eggs on the egg-sorting line. This is her first job.