300,000 Tibetan farmers, herders move into new houses

10:34, December 29, 2008  

Another 312,000 farmers and herders from 57,800 families have moved from shanty shelters to new Tibetan-style solid brick houses in Tibet this year under a government-subsidized housing project aimed at improving their living conditions.

"I only spent 18,000 yuan (2,647 U.S. dollars) on the construction of my new house, and the rest, totaling more than 40,000 yuan, were all granted by the government," Drolkar, a resident of the Yamda Village near Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, said Friday.

Her family recently moved into a new house with a 120-sq-m floor and a 100-sq-m courtyard.

Likewise, all 208 families in his village moved into new brick houses this year.

The five-year housing project was started in 2006 with a plan to build solid homes for 220,000 families. Once finished, it would mean housing for 80 percent of the region's farmers and herders by the end of 2010.

To date, 860,000 farmers and herders from 170,000 families have moved into new houses, the government statistics show.

Tibet's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow 10.1 percent year-on-year to reach 39.2 billion yuan this year, the 16th year that the plateau region has had double-digit economic growth, said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the regional government, at an economic work conference held earlier this week.

"Farmers and herds people are the beneficiaries of the economic development," he said, citing that per capita net income for them would reach 3,170 yuan, up 13.7 percent year-on-year.

The local government has also been improving electricity, water and transportation facilities in the countryside, he said.

The housing project was launched also for the sake of ecological conservationin in natural reserves and for the health of the farmers and herders, local officials said.

Health concerns have necessitated the relocation of farmers and herders. A number of them suffered from Kashin-Beck disease, also known as "big bone disease," a disabling illness of the bones and joints that leads to stunted growth and deformity of the joints.

The illness is widely believed to be linked to local water sources and the natural environment.

Source: eng.tibet.cn

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