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Over 6,800 Poor Families in NW China Move Into New Houses
After living at a cave house for 65 years, Ma Fengwu, a poor Muslim farmer in a village in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, was delighted to move into a big tile-brick house built with government financial supports.
The Ma's is among the 6,800 families living in Ningxia's mountainous Xihaigu prefecture, one of the poorest area in China, that benefited from a house renovation program launched by the regional government three years ago.
In 1997, the regional government conducted a survey in the eight counties of the Muslim-dominated prefecture and found 30,000 families were still living in dilapidated houses.
It has soon made a plan to help all the 30,000 poorest families in the prefecture live in new and good houses in three years. In a trial move soon after the survey, the government invested more than seven million yuan (about 843,370 U.S. dollars) and built new houses for more than 2,000 of the poorest families who either had no houses or were living in collapsing caves.
In 1999, the government allocated 6.25 million yuan (about 208, 333 dollars) for rebuilding or repairing 16,000 houses for a total of 4,900 families in the area. The move was very popular among the local people.
This year, the regional government has earmarked another seven million yuan (about 843,370 dollars) for repairing houses in danger for a total of 7,000 poor households.
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