More than 10,000 grassroots officials, sent to help poverty relief efforts in the isolated Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, Sichuan province, are crucial to winning the local antipoverty battle, a political advisor said on Thursday.

The prefecture's seclusion from the outside world has taken a toll on local development, and shaking off poverty has been a dream for generations for the local ethnic Yi people, according to Dajiu Mujia, a national political advisor from Liangshan.

He said local people were very grateful to the officials working there.

Over the past five years, 151 officials suffered injuries during work and 23 died on duty, he said.

He said that democratic reform launched 64 years ago has ended the slavery and subservience that the ethnic Yi people had endured for thousands of years.

Now the poverty relief campaign has made it possible for local people to soon enter a moderately prosperous society, he added.