Tibet builds escape route from poverty
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Pasang Drolma, 46, works on a farm near Duishigagyi, a newly built village in Chushul county. The farm is part of the government-backed Pure Land project. [Photo by HOU LIQIANG/CHINA DAILY] |
Residents in remote villages relocate to new settlements with modern housing and jobs. Hou Liqiang and Daqiong report from Chushul.
Shopping for daily necessities used to be a luxury for Pasang Drolma. The nearest store was in a town 30 kilometers away, and she only had the time to make the journey twice a year.
As no public buses ran though her isolated village in the Tibet autonomous region, to get there she would have to wait beside a dirt road for up to an hour to flag down a private minibus or taxi service.
That was until the end of last year, however, before the 46-year-old mother moved to Duishigagyi, a new village in Chushul county built specially to give impoverished families a fresh start.
So far, 365 households－roughly 1,700 people－have been resettled in the area as part of an ongoing poverty alleviation program. Residents enjoy convenient public transportation links, and "now we live in a spacious and much more comfortable new house", Pasang Drolma said.
Pure Land, a regional government-sponsored agricultural project nearby, has also provided a range of employment opportunities.
Due to unfavorable weather and soil conditions in their old village, Pasang Drolma and her husband had barely been able to grow enough grain to feed themselves. The family's only income was the 7,000 yuan ($1,070) a year their eldest son made working as a restaurant waiter in Lhasa, the regional capital.
Pasang Drolma and her youngest son now earn 100 yuan a day doing farmwork at Pure Land. "We don't have to work every day, we just work when we want," she said. "We made more than 10,000 yuan in the first half of this year."
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Drolma, 53, spends time with her daughter and grandchildren at home. [Photo by HOU LIQIANG/CHINA DAILY] |
The regional government started the Pure Land project in 2013. The area produces maca, a root vegetable native to the South American Andes; snow chrysanthemum, which is used mainly for tea; organic grapes, peaches and roses; ingredients for traditional Tibetan medicine; organic meat, and dairy products.
"The industry was brought in before people were relocated to the area," said Sonam Yangkyi, a village cadre in Duishigagyi. "All the resettled families have at least one person who can work, so they benefit from the industry."
China's growing demand for organic products and traditional Tibetan medicine has proved good news for the agricultural project, which is in a clean, high-altitude environment.
"One kilogram of ordinary peaches only sells for about 30 yuan, but a single peach from the Pure Land zone can sell for 100 yuan," Sonam Yangkyi said.
Last year, the project created 127,500 jobs and increased the per capita income in Duishigagyi by about 6,000 yuan, according to the village committee, which did not provide the actual income figure. It added that the 89 enterprises with operations in the zone had a combined output of 3.7 billion yuan.
Duishigagyi was one of 353 new settlements built in Tibet last year to relocate 77,000 people from isolated areas, with most next to industrial developments to ensure abundant job opportunities, according to Lu Huadong, deputy director of the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Office.
A further 450 new villages with room for 163,000 people were also planned this year, as the region looks to build a comprehensively well-off society by 2020, he added.
