Khmer gathering for festival celebration

A meeting was held on April 8 for nearly 200 Khmers representing the families of war invalids and revolutionary martyrs, heroic mothers, workers, pensioners, and monks in the Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang.
The meeting to celebrate the Chol Chnam Thmey festival was attended by various senior officials from the Party Central Committee, the National Ethnic Committee, and local state and party agencies.
Since 2009, the province has provided capital to assist almost 26,000 Khmer households, and new houses for more than 6,600 households, said Lam Ren, Head of the provincial Ethnic Committee.
More than 5,000 households have received land to build houses and loans to do farming and animal husbandry. As a result, the rate of poor Khmer households has dropped from 34 percent in 2006 to below 18 percent in 2010, with more than 80 percent of the households having access to electricity, and 87 percent to clean water.