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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2007 
Mexico to Invest 636 Million USD in Poorest Municipalities
 People's Daily
| | Calderon said 18 percent of Mexicans do not have the means to support themselves. They also suffer high infant mortality rates. |
Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced on Monday that his country would invest 7 billion pesos (around 636 million U.S. dollars) in a social and economic development project to help 100 poorest municipalities.
One billion pesos or 91 million dollars of the money will go to drinking water projects alone, Calderon told a press conference during a visit to Mecatlan, a municipality in the Totonaca region of the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz.
"The miserable conditions in which millions of Mexicans live are intolerable," Calderon said while naming several poorest states in different parts of the country.
He described poverty as the most serious problem facing Veracruz and the nation as a whole, and said it was time to pay back the enormous social debt owed to Mexico's least well-off citizens.
Speaking on the same occasion, Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera from the Institutional Revolution Party revealed a regional program called Cien Por Cien (100 Percent), which aims to coordinate federal government, state and municipal efforts to combat poverty.
Calderon said 18 percent of Mexicans do not have the means to support themselves. They also suffer high infant mortality rates.
He added that it was unacceptable that in a town like Mecatlan, half of the homes lack drinking water, and that seven out of 10 homes have a dirt floor.
The president said he was also appalled by the fact that illiteracy is four times the national average and that many young people were forced to leave because they had no way of making money.
The federal government said it would put in place a program for over-70s in rural communities of less than 2,500 residents, under which the senior resident will get a monthly pay of 500 pesos or around 1.50 dollars a day. |
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