below is what Anne sent to my forum, please read it and post it every where, _______
Dear all,
Quote: Vientiane authorities are providing compensation to households along both sides of the road who will lose their land, which will be sold to commercial operations upon completion of the road so the construction company can recoup its costs. Compensation for villagers affected by the road link itself is more than 80 percent complete, enabling the developer to start clearing land prior to construction, while negotiations will continuewith landowners whose properties are slated for later development. Two information that you will not find in this article:
1) The contract signed between Namtha Road-Bridge Construction Company and Vientiane authorities provides for compensation rate at 100 mio kip per hectare to be contributed to for 40% by the Government and 60% by the company. Once the road will be completed, the land on the sideway will be old again at much higher price and benefit will be shared between the government (40%) and the company (60%). However in reality, affected people receive much less, sometimes only 5 mio kip per hectare. This means 500 kip per m2 which is about 100 times less than current market price (currently estimated at 47¹000 kip per m2 for this area). 2) Namtha Road-Bridge Construction Company¹s owner has a son who is married to the daughter of Vientiane Mayor, Soukanh Mahalath. The two families jointly found Complex Land Development Company which will be involved in developing the same area (Ban XiengDa).
In such arrangements, affected people are put in a very weak position to negotiate due to collusion of interests between the company and the government: their common interest is to pay very low compensation to local community, set a price for the land far under market price, in order to maximize their profit. And resort to public force (security or police) to impose unfair arrangement is being used. Risk is even more obvious when family and business are linked to power.
