More than 6 million disadvantaged people in Viet Nam will be able to receive the Government’s financial support if the proposed poverty line is applied in 2011.

Farmers in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum grow coffee seedlings.

According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ recent proposal, the new poverty standard includes those living in rural areas who earn VND350,000 (US$19) or less a month, or those living in urban areas who earn VND450,000 ($25) or less a month.

The existing poverty line, which was created in 2005, is VND200,000 per person per month in the countryside and VND260,000 for those living in urban areas.

With VND200,000, people can buy only 12kg of rice, which is not enough to survive for an entire month.

“The new level has been based on calculations that will ensure that individuals have enough money for cooking and basic necessities,” said Dang Kim Chung, Deputy Director of the Institute for Social Labour under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA).

The new poverty line, in effect, would increase the number of poor households in the country by 7 per cent.

Positive figures

According to the Government’s poverty reduction programme report, the country has made a huge effort to reduce the rate of poor families from 18 per cent in 2006 to 12.1 per cent by the end of 2008. The State hopes to decrease the number of poor households to 11 per cent by 2010.

However, at one of the recent National Assembly’s meetings, many deputies doubted the authenticity of the figure.

Deputies Nguyen Van Sy from Quang Nam Province, Nguyen Hong Nhi from Nghe An Province and Hoang Ngoc Thai from Ninh Thuan Province said that the 11 per cent figure did not reflect the country’s actual poverty level.

In another conference on the impacts of the global crisis on poverty and sustainable development, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Bui Ba Bong admitted that there were many poor people that fail to access support from the Government, which has launched programmes to help residents cope with the economic downturn.

However, some experts suggested taking a multi-dimensional approach to measuring poverty in the future, instead of simply using an income-based poverty line.

Le Thi Ngan from Tan Son Commune in Ha Nam Province said her family was worried that they would not be included on the list of poor families in the commune in the future.

“I don’t know why but the staff at the commune’s People’s Committee said that my family was not poor anymore, and that means that we will not receive any further support,” Ngan said.

The 46-year-old woman had to rent a room in Ha Noi with nine other women and sell fruit every day with her bicycle to earn a living for herself, her disabled husband and three children. She earns VND40,000 ($2.1) a day, but is unable to work every day of the month.

“I usually have to borrow money in order to pay school fees for my children. My family’s life was hard even when we still received support from the State,” she said.

If she is unable to access these support programmes, then at least one of her children will have to quit school.

“We have to save money for food,” she said.

According to a report carried out by MOLISA and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Viet Nam in June, poverty should be defined in a more multi-faceted manner.

The reports suggested that it was time for Viet Nam to develop the relative poverty concept, in which a detailed analysis is made according to the correlation between the poverty line (a minimum standard of living) and the average social expenditure (the average social living standard).

“Poverty will need to reflect the household’s ability to attain an average living standard, rather than an absolute benchmark figure,” said Dang Kim Chung, deputy director of the Institute for Labour Science and Social Affairs (ILSSA) under the MOLISA.

Measuring poverty would, thus, include household’s access to primary education, nutrition, health care, accommodations, environmental sustainability and access to safe drinking water, Chung said.

The poverty line itself was not comprehensive enough, he said.

Thus, in the country’s case, other projects on clean water or housing for poor families and social welfare policies are important.

Also, the ILSSA and the World Bank are currently working on exploring the “poverty score card”, which uses a small set of easily observable proxies in order to measure poverty.

Setting up a multi-dimensional approach to poverty is of great importance because it will help the Government to identify residents living in impoverished conditions so that it can help them escape poverty, according to Chung.

“It’s simple, since economic growth must coincide with poverty reduction, it is the only way to attain sustainable development,” he said.

Certainly, along with a proper poverty measurement, the Government’s policies to reduce poverty must be indispensable.

Nguyen Tien Phong, head of the Poverty Reduction Unit of UNDP in Viet Nam, said that the Government should re-examine their social protection policies in order to ensure that these are applied fairly.

A comprehensive social welfare system must be further improved, so that no one was left out, he said.

“The new poverty line has still not been applied, but MOLISA has set up social welfare policies that will support nearly 1 million families identified as living in sub-poverty,” said Vo Thi Hoai Thanh, deputy head of the National Targeted Programme for Poverty Reduction Co-ordination Office.

Hopefully these policies will help poor families like Ngan’s.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News