Increase in rural nursing homes set

Facility funding to come from revenue of welfare lottery sales

The central government will increase financial investment to boost the construction of special nursing homes for rural elderly people, Jiang Li, vice-minister of civil affairs, revealed on Friday.

The Civil Affairs Ministry and the Ministry of Finance will allocate 1 billion yuan ($160.7 million) each year until 2015 for rural areas, and the funding will be mainly used for building more facilities that can enable left-behind senior residents to help take care of each other in rural areas, Jiang said at a news conference during the annual sessions of the top legislature and political advisory body.