A house with a broken staircase at a resettlement village for residents displaced by the A Vuong hydropower plant in Quang Nam Province.

Thousands of Quang Nam Province residents have been left unemployed and hungry after losing their farmland to hydroelectric projects.

“Most households are seeking to return to their former places to temporarily cultivate or breed livestock.” He said that while their land had been revoked, much has yet to be built upon and is still arable.

Tranh, who has recently been researching the lives of residents displaced by hydropower plants in Quang Nam’s Vu Gia and Thu Bon river basins, said most are now suffering from a lack of cooking and myriad of other difficulties.

More than 90 percent of residents who used to farm to survive now have no income since being relocated and 83 percent of them are facing hunger, according to a report written by Tranh.

As a consequence, 64.7 percent of residents had been illegally clearing forests to grow crops. Tranh’s report said a total area of 2,000 hectares of forestland had been cleared in this way so far.

The report also cited research conducted at Tra Bui Commune in Quang Nam’s Bac Tra My District, where all 1,266 hectares of farmland were lost to the Tranh River Hydropower Plant project.

More than 870 households in the commune, including 674 displaced by the project, are struggling to earn a living after the government’s one-year support ended recently. They say the land given to them in their resettlement area is barely arable.

Le Tri Tap, former chairman of the Quang Nam People’s Committee, said during a hydropower plant development seminar last week that the projects had eliminated forestlands, worsened flooding and endangered lives.

It was “terrible” that the province had nearly 60 hydropower plants, he said.

Resettlements need rethinking

On a recent visit to resettlement areas, Thanh Nien found that most land offered as compensation to displaced residents was of poor quality and unfit to accommodate the communities’ cultivation methods, which have long been based in the highlands.

The A Vuong Hydropower Plant reservoir was built on 941 hectares of previously occupied land in Dong Giang and Tay Giang districts, forcing 1,582 Co Tu ethnic minority residents to move to the newly-built resettlement areas of Pachepalanh, Cut Chrun and Ma Cooih.

Each family was given 1.5 hectares of land, but the residents say the soil is of poor quality and nearly impossible to cultivate.

Debts, population increase

Most residents now spend their days at home, watching television, increasing their power bills by having such electric amenities running all day long.

Dinh Thai Long, chairman of Dong Giang District People’s Committee, said Pachepalanh residents owed a total of VND300 million (US$16,242) in electricity fees.

Thanh Nien also found that while parents were idling away unemployed, birthrates were also increasing in resettlement villages.

“The investors make profits by selling electricity while local authorities are stuck solving residents specific problems and the general social problems that follow,” said an official from Dong Giang District who requested anonymity.

More to come

Violent floods caused by typhoon Ketsana on September 29 killed 163 people in the central region and forced many Quang Nam households to relocate to safer areas.

Experts are concerned that the floods will strengthen and threaten more villages located on river banks due to the increase of hydropower plants, which have destroyed vast areas of forests needed to hinder flooding. The plants must also discharge huge amounts of water during storms to avoid damaging their dams, but this makes flooding even more violent and destructive.

Thus, riverside dwellers are increasingly in danger as they are reluctant to leave and proper resettlements have yet to be built.

“Others have resettled but I and several other families an staying at the place because we are so poor,” said Nguyen Dinh Chien of the An Phuoc Village in the commune’s My Phuoc neighborhood.

Typhoon Ketsana widened the Thu Bon River by up to eight meters in An Phuoc, not including annual erosion of between five and eight meters inland.

As more land continues to be washed away, at least 525 My Phuoc households are now at risk.

In the province’s Tien Phuoc District, another 110 households are in danger of being swept away by floods or landslides.

However, residents have refused to move to resettlement areas, complaining that the infrastructure is too poor.

In the Quang Nam Province’s Duy Xuyen District, hundreds of locals living in 56 houses near the Hon Bang Mountain have also refused to move to a safer place.

Residents said the government support of VND10 million ($530) each family was not enough to build a house in their designated resettlement area.

Reported by Hua Xuyen Huynh – Duong Thanh Tung