Under the principle of “human-oriented scientific development”, northern Inner Mongolia’s Ereen-Hot Municipality (“Er Lian Hao Te Shi” in Chinese) has considered the ecological immigration as “number one priority” and achieved an encouraging result.

Currently, Ereen-Hot Municipality administers an area of 4,015.1 square kilometers which is more than 25 times that in the past and includes the newly added land of 354 herders’ households with a population of 1,249. Located at Guun-Shand Desert’s sand source area, Ereen-Hot Municipality’s grazing land, as the major starting point of sandstorms, has had a large effect on the overall development of the municipality. Ereen-Hot Municipal’s Party Committee and Government have deeply recognized that there cannot be an affluent Ereen-Hot without achieving a modest level of living standard for the herders. In order to improve the ecological environment and bring prosperity to the vast majority of the herders, the Party Committee Secretary of Ereen-Hot Municipality has personally led the ecological immigration, the “number one priority project”.

In order to put an end to the current poverty, production backwardness and ecological degradation, the Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government decided to immediately relocate all herders’ households into Ereen-Hot City urban districts except for some 50 - 80 households from the mid-level living standard who are capable of taking care of the grassland and promote “animal husbandry for tourism”. Planned to be completed this year, ecological immigration resettlement residences will not only reflect both nomadic and urban characteristics but also will be flavored with a new settlement style. This immigration task must be completed before the end of this year or the beginning of next year. In accordance with the benefit coverage policies of “five guarantees household” and “extremely poor household”, herders’ living standard will be correspondingly improved. After the categorized skill training, immigrants at the age of 16 to 40 will be given the priority for employment by the Labor and Human Resource Department and Social Security Bureau according to the job position availability. Medical care and pension plan of immigrants will be the same as these of the city residents. Herders’ training base will be built to improve their skills. All funds including ecological immigration fund, desert-combat project fund, and borderland impoverishment fund will be bound together as an ecological immigration special fund and earmarked immediately to address difficulties encountered during the immigration process.

<Back>