North China's water-deficient Shanxi Province has been launching a three-year program that will help quench the drinking water shortage for the province's 2.4 million poor farmers.
According to local sources, the entire program will cost 720 million yuan (about 86.75 million U.S. dollars), said local sources.
The provincial government will raise 240 million yuan this year which will mainly be used to ease the drinking water shortage first for 630,000 rural people in the province's 22 counties.
Shanxi is dubbed as the "sea of coal", but has suffered enormously from a lack of water resources. The situation has resulted in a limited economic development in the province's rural areas, especially mountainous regions, and a great number of poor farmers living under absolute poverty.
