15 September 2020

More than a hundred families in central Laos’ Bolikhamxay province who were displaced by the Nam Theun 1 dam have decided to accept compensation, putting an end to a standoff that lasted 17 months, sources in Laos told RFA.

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Nearly 625 families were displaced by the first of two dams on the Nam Theun River, a Mekong tributary, and about 500 families settled compensation claims in March 2019.

The 125 families that had in March 2019 refused compensation of about U.S. $8,000 per hectare (2.5 acres) of lost land, instead demanding between $10,000 and $14,000, settled last month.

The families in the province’s Viengthong district in late August accepted 120 million kip ($13,150) per hectare of farmland and 200 million kip ($21,900) per hectare for the land on which their homes sat, according to an affected villager.

“We all have received compensation, but the amounts were below what we were expecting,” the affected villager who currently resides at a resettlement village told RFA’s Lao Service Monday.

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A Viengthong district official told RFA Monday that the families were made to wait so long because of the coronavirus.

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‘We have no land to farm’

Even though all 624 of the displaced families have now received compensation, at least 335 of them are currently still living at the Houay Hoy resettlement village, and have not returned to farming due to lack of available land.

A third resettled villager told RFA, “We want to go back to our farmland in our old villages to grow rice and vegetables.”

“Here at the resettlement village, we just sit, do nothing, and only wait for our living allowances, because we have no land to farm,” the third villager said.

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