The government of southwest China's Sichuan Province plans to help build permanent brick houses and provide new tents for 100,000 Tibetan herdsmen this year to improve their living conditions.

"Permanent houses are built mainly for the elderly and children," said Jing Quanlin, director of the Sichuan Provincial Ethnic Affairs Committee, on Thursday.

"Meanwhile, we will respect their traditional lifestyle of being nomads and provide new tents for young Tibetans," he said.

Each household will get a new tent free of charge, either eight square meters or 12 square meters, he said.

Along with the new tents, the government will provide daily necessities to help the nomads enjoy a "modern" life, such as folding beds, steel furnaces, campstools, milk separators, multi-functional desks, solar energy lights and others, he said.

"They can choose to buy those products or not. If they buy, the government will give two-thirds discount to them," he added.

For a long time, the nomadic Tibetan people have lived a simple life in home-made, shabby tents and were prone to diseases.

According to the government's plan, Sichuan will input 18 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion) over the next four years to build new houses, primary schools, clinics, offices and other public service infrastructure in the villages, Jing said.

Statistics show that among the total 533,000 herdsmen in Sichuan, 219,000 still have no fixed residences and 254,000 are living in shanty houses.

Similar housing projects have also been carried out in the neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region and northwestern provinces of Qinghai and Gansu, in a hope to improve the living conditions and public services for the nomadic Tibetan communities.

(Xinhua News Agency February 20, 2009)