Intro: Dispatching officials to poor villages to boost poverty alleviation is an important measure to strengthen the anti-poverty endeavor at the community level and to lay a solid foundation for winning the battle against poverty. Here is an outline of China’s village-stationed poverty relief work excerpted from Yearbook of China’s Poverty Alleviation and Development, 2020.
Village-stationed Poverty Relief is one of China’s basic poverty-relief work. It is also a key step to allow the poverty-relief personnel better continue their fight against poverty on the front line and solve the issues of “who should implement poverty alleviation initiatives”.
In order to implement the mechanism of village-stationed poverty relief, policies and measures are made to:
Stepping up supports for dispatching poverty-relief officials to poor villages.Chinese authorities assigned village-stationed work teams, and the poverty-relief personnel were sent to non-poverty villages on the condition that all poverty-stricken villages had been covered by such a policy. Excellent young officials and the reserve personnel would be firstly selected to be the village-stationed officials, and constantly optimize the personnel structure of the stationed work team. In 2019, a total of 255,000 work teams and 918,000 officials were sent to poverty-hit villages.
Further strengthening work capabilities. Authorities upheld a problem-oriented approach and focused on the practical needs of poverty alleviation. Localities provided tailor-made training for village-stationed officials based on their work needs. Poverty-relief officials’ work capabilities were enhanced and their work conduct were improved through the combination of demonstration training with rotation training, the combination of “bringing in” with “going out”, and the combination of classroom teaching with on-site teaching. In 2019, the country delivered training for 1.53 million village-stationed officials, greatly improving their work capabilities.
Further enhancing inspection and supervision. Authorities constantly improved the management rules on village-stationed work teams, put in place a series of management systems including managing leave requests and tracking attendance, recording work logs, holding regular work meetings, giving education and training and making inspection tours to supervise poverty alleviation work. Chinese senior officials required inspectors to conduct random poverty-alleviation inspections by paying unannounced visit at irregular intervals and making calls to the targeted villages to inquire the poverty-relief progress.
Further enhancing political motivation. Localities improved the regulations and rules on village-stationed work teams. Village-stationed officials must receive comprehensive evaluation on performing work duties, work results, and whether they could maintain personal integrity and be self-disciplined, so that they could keep the poverty alleviation work on the right course. Senior officials called for strengthening poverty alleviation inspections and rewarding and punishing as appropriate. The poverty-relief officials with excellent performance would be promoted and awarded, and the unqualified officials would be removed from their posts.
Further implementing security measures.The rules on the funds allocated to support village-stationed work teams were improved. In step with national economic development, Chinese authorities set the standards of funding for poverty-relief work and allocated special fiscal poverty alleviation funds to ensure the work teams could carry out their work smoothly. Besides, a sound system for distributing living and transportation allowance to village-stationed officials was established. All of the poverty-relief officials would receive physical check-ups regularly and were covered by the personal accident insurance. Chinese authorities attached high importance to the physical and mental health of village-stationed officials and gave care and concern.
Resource: Yearbook of China’s poverty alleviation and development for 2020
