Early provision of production land for resettled people at Hua Na Hydropower Plant

(Baonghean) - 1,362 households in Que Phong have agreed to move to 13 resettlement sites to serve the construction of the Hua Na Hydropower Project (Que Phong). Life in the new place with housing systems, roads, and living conditions of the people has been built more spaciously. The resettlement areas are built in a concentrated manner to create conditions for community activities to be close-knit and united to build a new life. However, the most concerning thing for the people in the resettlement areas is the lack of livelihood to stabilize their lives in the long term.

Due to lack of land for production, many workers still stay at home like this.

Noong Danh village, Dong Van commune (Que Phong) is one of the first villages to be relocated to the resettlement site - Pieng Cu 1 village, Tien Phong commune, since the end of 2010. After nearly 5 years, the lives of 75 households in the village still mainly depend on the rice support from the project and exploiting secondary forest products in the forest. The main reason, according to the Party Secretary of Pieng Cu 1 village, Luong Van Hung, is that people still do not have land for production. Although some areas have been granted, because they have only been temporarily allocated and have not been granted land certificates, people are not confident in their production. Some areas of land have overlapped with some local households, or the land has been granted to resettled people but the investor has not yet compensated the local households for the recovered land, so disputes have arisen. Similarly, in Pieng Cu 2 village and Huoi Sai village (Thong Thu commune), households in the village do not have land for production, so their livelihood depends on rice support. A common image in resettlement families is that most of the main workers are at home, leaning against the door looking out.

Mr. Tran Van Bien, Deputy Director of Hua Na Hydropower Joint Stock Company, said: Currently, there are 7 resettlement sites that have not completed the allocation of forestry land to the people; and only 8 resettlement sites for agricultural land have been temporarily handed over the planning boundaries of agricultural production land, but have not yet allocated detailed land and issued land use right certificates, so people are not confident in production. Regarding rice land area, only 6/13 resettlement sites have been planned with enough area for rice production to be allocated to households; the rest, due to difficulties in terrain and water sources to ensure production, have proposed to switch to growing other suitable crops.

The fundamental reason for the slow handover of production land at the Hua Na Hydropower resettlement sites is related to the total approved investment, leading to land compensation for local people not being completed. According to Mr. Bien, up to this point, the Company has paid about 1,200 billion VND for resettlement-related expenses, exceeding the total approved investment. In difficult economic conditions, the unit is waiting for approval of a new total investment to have funds to continue paying support to the people. Mr. Truong Minh Cuong, Vice Chairman of Que Phong District People's Committee, affirmed that the district will actively coordinate with the investor to complete the compensation for land recovery from local people to provide for resettled households. At the same time, it will strengthen propaganda and mobilize households with land recovery decisions to agree to hand over to resettled households...

Minh Chi