JEDDAH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah on Sunday ordered the payment of SR1.17 billion in emergency aid in order for poor families to cover their Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr expenses.

Social Affairs Minister Yousuf Al-Othaimeen thanked King Abdullah for his humanitarian gesture and commended the government’s efforts to improve the situation of the country’s poor.

All Saudis registered with social insurance are entitled to receive the emergency aid, including the elderly, the sick, widows, the divorced, orphans, prisoners’ families and the abandoned.

Al-Othaimeen said his ministry, in coordination with the Finance Ministry, would take necessary steps for the speedy implementation of the royal decree. “The emergency aid is given to the poor families in addition to the monthly social insurance payment,” the minister pointed out.

Saudi Arabia has embarked on a massive plan to reduce the Kingdom’s poverty rate to 13.3 percent by the end of this year and bring it down to 2.2 percent by 2020.

Abdullah Al-Moaiqel, secretary-general of the National Strategy to Combat Poverty, said a number of programs had been introduced to fight poverty in the Kingdom. “A family that cannot provide the basic necessities of life such as food, clothing, housing, education and health, is considered poor,” Al-Moaiqel said.

He put the number of Saudi families living in extreme poverty at 35,000 or 1.63 percent of the total Saudi population. They live on less than SR1,700 a month. There are 409,000 families which spend less than SR3,800 a month and they represent 18.9 percent of the population, he explained.

The government has been spending more than SR264 million annually to support poor families. It requires SR7.2 billion annually to meet the needs of the poor. According to a study, Jazan province has the largest number of poor people in the country (45 percent) while Qassim has the lowest (eight percent). The Jazan Economic City was planned as part of the government’s strategy to fight poverty and achieve balanced growth in all parts of the Kingdom.

The study showed that 39 percent of families in Jazan live below the poverty threshold (the minimum level of income deemed necessary to achieve an adequate standard of living), against 24.53 percent families in Najran, 24.07 percent in Madinah and 23.59 percent in the Northern Border Province.

Some 44 percent of Saudis live in rented apartments, and 30 percent (695,000 families) in unsuitable housing. The government has set up an authority to address the housing problem.

About 40 percent of the Kingdom’s illiterate are poor, with women account for 70 percent of the illiterate population.