Hatsaykham is a small village located in Bolikhan District, Bolikhamxay Province, Lao PDR, with 40 households of Hmong ethnicity. The village is about 45 kilometres from Paksan, district provincial town.
Like most villages in remote areas of Laos, in Hatsaykham domesticated animals roam freely, shirtless small children play with dirt or pets outside houses or on the community road that cuts through the village. Most of the 40 houses are made with bamboo walls with thatched roofs. Small vegetable gardens and fish ponds can be found in the backyard of some houses. The gentle sound of the Nam Ngiep River can be heard behind the village.
Hatsaykham and four other villages in the Hom District of Xaysomboun Province are located within the Nam Ngiep 1 Hydropower Project (NNP1) area and they will be inundated by a reservoir which will be created by the Project once the construction of the dam has been completed in 2018.
About 3,000 people will be relocated to make way for this hydropower project of 290-megawatt installed capacity which is under construction in Bolikhamxay and Xaysomboun Provinces of Lao PDR. About 93% of the electricity will be sold to Thailand and the rest to Electricity du Laos.
To minimize social impacts on these communities, NNP1 has been working with community members and local governmental officials under Lao government and international guidelines to develop and implement compensation packages and a livelihood development programme to ensure that the communities enjoy improved living conditions.
“I’ve been telling my wife, children and other families, and the rest of the villagers that we should participate in the livelihood development programme that the Project has offered; otherwise we will lose it,” said Mr. Kue Xong from Hatsaykham Village.
Community Development staff from the Project come to teach us how to breed and raise frogs, fish and other livestock, and grow vegetables for consumption and for sale. Some villagers do not seem to understand and tend to shy away from this programme,” said Mr. Xong while sitting on a bench under big trees in his backyard during one cool morning.
Like most communities in rural Laos, people’s livelihoods in Hatsaykham are based on the weather and the season. They grow upland rice and go to forests, streams or rivers to forage for foods; the practice of generations.
“As natural resources are dwindling, we need to change this practice,” said 62-year old Xong.
A retired Lao Army soldier and a member of the Hatsaykham Village Committee, the Xongs grow rattan and raise fish that the Project has introduced to the village. The family also have a big pineapple plantation nearby the village but outside of the Project area, and herds of cows and buffalos.
“We provide villagers with a start-up fund and help prepare fish ponds and vegetable gardens. We train them how to grow food and earn extra income. We also take them to visit similar livelihood development programmes implemented by other hydropower projects in Laos so that they see and understand and can apply the knowledge in their communities,” said Mr. Nilandon Thavonsouk, Team Leader of the Livelihood Development Programme of NNP1.
Less than a year after NNP1 started implementing this livelihood development programme in Hatsaykham village and other villages in the Project area, it has started to bear fruit. For example, every household in Hatsaykham has participated in at least one activity and some families already have sold some of their produce such as catfish and vegetables to local buyers and contractors of NNP1.
In addition, NNP1 is working with local people and authorities to build new good-quality houses and community facilities for the villagers moving to the new resettlement village, just west of the re-regulating dam at Houaysoup in Bolikhamxay Province. Resettlement is expected to take place in the first half of 2016 and 2017.
Under lenders’ conditions, construction of the resettlement site will only commence once the Project Affected People have been compensated.
Mr. Xong said that he and the villagers are happy with NNP1’s livelihood development programme. However, they have concern about land-to-land compensation.
“NNP1 takes people’s concern very seriously. We have been communicating this issue with the Project Affected People to enhance their understanding. The Project is confident that the compensation policy which has been considered and approved by the Provincial Relocation and Livelihood Restoration Committee is fair for the people,” said Mr. Prapard Pan-Aram, Deputy Managing Director – Environmental and Social Division of the Nam Ngiep 1 Power Company, the developer of the NNP1 Project.
Mr. Prapard said the Project Affected People can choose to either resettle in the new resettlement village or receive full compensation and resettle by themselves.
A year or so from now, if the Xongs and the rest of the villagers from Hatsaykham and other impacted villages choose to move to the resettlement village, they will be living in their new houses, where clean water, sanitation and health care will be made available; where their children and grandchildren will not have to walk very far to school; and where the life skills they are learning now from the Project will sustain them in many years to come.
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