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Article

5 Mar 2015

Author:
Gus Greenstein, International Rivers

Lesotho: Communities complain of impoverishment following re-settlement by World Bank dam scheme

'World Bank dams leave Lesotho in the dust', 5 March 2015: The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) was one of the World Bank's biggest African dam schemes, and the Bank took special pains with project resettlement. Despite…this…poverty has increased…in Lesotho's dam-affected areas…“We used to be rich!” says Maneu...[who] has been receiving 2,000 South African Rand (about US$175) of compensation annually for her lost agricultural fields from the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA), the parastatal entity in charge of the…scheme…[P]ayments are constant and timely…[t]hey’re just about 90% short. Whereas it now takes 20,000 Rand per year to feed her family…she didn’t pay a dime to do so before the dam took her land away. Since then, she’s scrounged together temporary cleaning jobs at the few guesthouses in the area, and her children have left school to contribute – the son as a herd boy…the daughter works in Chinese textile factories…[where] [p]ay and working conditions…aren’t the best…