VietNamNet Bridge – Local people have to pay a heavy price for the hydropower plants arisen in their homeland. They have been leading unstable lives with the modest average income of VND7.2 million per annum.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has sent a report to the National Assembly’s Science and Technology Committee, providing the panorama about the 21 surveyed hydropower plant projects.

It is estimated that 75,000 families, or 324,600 people had to leave their home, rice fields and gardens to give place for the 21 projects.

While the local authorities were very diligent in taking land from people to allocate “clean” land to investors, they were slow in providing land to local people to resume the agriculture production.

The Son La hydropower plant was hailed as a great achievement because it was fulfilled three years ahead the schedule. However, the project has made people suffer.

A lot of households in Dien Bien province still have not received land for production. They have been doing all works they can find to earn their living. The project has influenced 35,569 hectares of agriculture land, but only 24,361 hectares of land have been allocated to farmers.

The government, when approving the Son La, Lai Chai, Huoi Quang and Ban Chat projects, which have a very important significance, decided to apply a special mechanism on compensating people for the site clearance. However, in fact, every household in Son La project received VND19 million only.

Having no land for production, receiving no support to earn their living, people have rushed to cut down trees in the forest for the slash-and-burn cultivation and to get timber for sale.

In return for leaving the home areas which have been taken over by the hydropower plants, local residents have received bad things. Clean water has been lacking at all the resettlement areas, while the electricity, road, school systems are all in bad conditions.

Experts believe that people need at least five years to have normal lives in the resettlement areas, while the minority ethnic people need more time, about 10 years. However, they have not received appropriate support to get adapted to the new circumstances.

As a result, the average income of households in the resettlement areas is very low, just VND7.2 million per head per annum, which is just equal to 30 percent of the average income of the whole country in 2012.

Especially, the figure is much lower than the average level in some specific areas. The local residents in the Dong Nai 3 project area in Lam Dong province only got VND5.5 million, in Song Tranh 2 VND4.5 million, Cua Dat project in Nghe AN province and An Khe – Kanak in Gia Lai VND4.2 million.

The resettlement areas have made records in the number of poor households. While the average percentage of poor families in the whole country is 10 percent, the figure is especially high in the areas at 36.6 percent. In the Hoa Binh project area, it is 39 percent. The figures are 60 percent in Khe Bo and Dong Nai, nearly 90 percent in Ban Ve and 100 percent in Ta Co.

The poor people received a lot of promises from the project investors when they left home for the site clearance. However, they have not received what they were promised.

Dang Dinh Toai, Chair of Song Hinh district, said 99 percent of local residents are the poor, who don’t have land to organize the production, because the district’s land fund has got exhausted.

Thien Nhien