China's skills-based poverty alleviation helps rural areas produce new artisans

Xinhua Net Kunming, October 15 (Ji Zhepeng, Zhan Jingjing) - In western China, more and more “new artisans” created through skills training are escaping poverty, and their skills cover many areas including planting, breeding, construction and even logistics and e-commerce.

“How to prune, when to fertilize, it really requires care; after training, the fruit grown is better.” said Fu Fayan, a villager of Huayuan Village, Mangbu Town, Zhenxiong County, the largest poverty-stricken county in Yunnan Province, in her own orchard. The training Fu Fayan received came from the Zhenxiong Bangxing Ecological Agriculture Farmers' Cooperative. The agricultural science and technology training school jointly run by the local government and this cooperative is not only completely free, but also provides food and lodging.

⟦NL> As of 2014, this cooperative had trained more than 3,500 person-times of farmers, and in 2015 it plans to train 1,500 person-times.

In Yunnan Province, whose poor population ranks second in the country, there are still 93 poverty-stricken counties and 5.74 million poor people. Although rural labor resources are abundant, the proportion of skilled workers who have received systematic training remains relatively low. A skills-based poverty alleviation plan currently being implemented proposes to help reduce the poor population by 1 million by 2020.

Zhang Zulin, vice governor of Yunnan Province, said that from 2011 to now, the government has invested 508 million yuan in fiscal poverty alleviation funds to implement labor transfer training for 720,000 people, and the special funds for the “Yulu Plan”, aimed at poverty alleviation through labor transfer training and employment, amounted to 93.66 million yuan; skills-based poverty alleviation has become an important means of cutting off the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Shi Likang, director of the Yunnan Provincial Employment Bureau, said that in 2014 the province had more than 23.35 million rural laborers, but a cumulative total of 1.6817 million people had participated in training, a trained proportion of only 7.2%, which has hindered the transformation of human resources into talent resources.

To this end, Yunnan plans to use about 5 years starting from 2015, centering on the needs of economic and social development in poor areas and the promotion of employment and entrepreneurship among poor people, and through a special skills-based poverty alleviation action, train workers suited to the needs of local industrial development as well as skilled talent suited to the development of Yunnan's key industries.

“Yunnan's goal is to strive to provide at least 1 skills training session to every poor person of working age with labor capacity by 2020, ensure that every poor household with a person of working age has at least 1 skilled worker employed, and help 1 million poor people escape poverty.” Shi Likang said.

Zhenxiong County, where Fu Fayan lives, has more than 420,000 poor people. Huang Jie, deputy county head of Zhenxiong County, said that through the skills-based poverty alleviation action, Zhenxiong intends to achieve the overall goal that at least 1 person in each poor household and each household with laid-off and unemployed members masters 1-2 skills, and starting this year it will focus on carrying out skills training for more than 420,000 poor people in 196 poor villages across the county.

The Zhenxiong Bangxing Ecological Agriculture Farmers' Cooperative has already led more than 10,000 farming households onto the path of growing fruit trees to become wealthy. The cooperative has established an agricultural science and technology training school, training more than 100 new-type farmers who master scientific planting techniques in each session.

Liu Yibin, founder and chairman of this cooperative, said, “Through technicians, the cooperative teaches fruit tree planting techniques to members in each village who are capable and willing to learn, and then these trained members teach the farming households in each village; the members are very enthusiastic.”

In order to help farming households master fruit tree cultivation techniques well, the training class adopts “follow-up” teaching, that is, with reference to the process of fruit tree growth, different content is taught each year. Liu Yibin said: “Teaching according to the fruit tree growth cycle will achieve better results and be more targeted.”

In Yanshan County, Wenshan Prefecture, located in the Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi rocky desertification area, Deputy County Head Li Ming said that many migrant workers who go out to work are “working just for the sake of working”; once they earn money, they take it back to their hometown to build houses, and then go out again to continue working.

However, without a professional skill, these migrant workers have not been able to fundamentally change the poverty of their families. The surplus labor in poor areas known as “two post-school youths”, who have graduated from junior or senior high school and cannot continue their education, is an important part of those going out to work.

An important task of Yunnan Province's special skills-based poverty alleviation action is to actively organize and carry out labor reserve system training and poverty alleviation for “two post-school youths”, increase their employment skills, and provide each student with a training subsidy of 1,500 yuan per semester (3,000 yuan per academic year).

Li Ming said that at the end of August this year, the Yanshan County government signed an agreement with Yunnan Technician College, adopting a joint school-running model of “government-school cooperation, entrusted management”, to carry out technical education and skills-based poverty alleviation work for local poor people, “two post-school youths”, and employees of some enterprises.