Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) held a Seminar on "Poverty Situation and Outline for Reducing Poverty" by having the guideline in 2 main issues; reducing poverty of the poor in rural and urban areas, and promoting good governance to support poverty reduction.
Mr. Sansern Wongcha-um, Secretary-General of the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB( said in the brainstorming Seminar on "Poverty Situation and Outline for Reducing Poverty" on June 29, 2001 at Sofitel Central Plaza Hotel, Bangkok, that reducing poverty was one of the main objectives of the Ninth National Economic and Social Development Plan. The purposes of the guideline were to reduce poverty in rural and urban areas by adjusting the development process to be more comprehensive with the active participation of the poor, and to decrease the development gap by solving structural problems, revising development policies, administration systems, rules and regulations to benefit the poor.
For the poverty reduction of the poor in rural area, it stressed on agricultural restructuring by promoting sustainable agriculture, strengthening community economy to be self-reliant, encouraging local wisdom and technology, increasing opportunities for rural people to have access to moderntechnology and innovation, and encouraging the poor to gather, form groups and be a network.
In the urban area, it should be focused on promoting careers and income security by encouraging the poor to form career groups of ommunity business networks, supporting urban communities to formulate development programmes and providing housing for slum people, using community as the core developer to improve environment and quality of life for slum people and urban poor to become livable, as well as expanding and reinforcing urban community network and linking with the rural sector.
The Secretary-General continued that the good governance for supporting poverty reduction was comprised of 1)promoting economic policy that strengthened immunity for the poor. 2)strengthening basic services and developing social protection system and 3)promoting good governance.
He concluded that the process of reducing poverty should develop poverty reduction policy to be a public policy that continuously implemented with participation of all sectors including the poor. The action plan should be based on area, function and participation which linked every level from the community plan up to the national plan. The network of coordination from every part of the society should be encouraged in order to support the translating of the plan into action.
Development News Bulletin, National Economic and Social Development Board, Volume 18, No. 6 : June 2001 End.
-SS-