Resettlement area has only 3 households

Nghe An: 46 resettlement houses in Khe O village, Yen Na commune, Tuong Duong district were completed 18 years ago, but currently only 3 households live there.

Khe O resettlement area, Yen Na commune was established in 2005 to serve households who had to give up their land for the Ban Ve hydroelectric plant construction project. 46 stilt houses of 40-60 m2 were newly built, located close to the mountainside, facing the Nam Non river. Of these, 37 were built by the investor; 9 were built by the people themselves, each receiving support of 12 million VND.

A corner of Khe O resettlement area. Photo: Duc Hung

Many auxiliary items such as concrete roads, electricity grid, kindergartens, community houses... were also invested. People in many villages in Yen Na commune moved to Khe O to make a living by going to the forest and doing agriculture .

However, after only 5 years of resettlement, 43 families left Khe O to build houses on land along the Nam Non River or on the construction site that was formerly the hydropower contractor's camp to live. Currently, only 3 households remain in the village because they do not have the funds to relocate.

Mr. Luong Dai Thang, 72 years old, living in Khe O resettlement area, said that in 2010, a heavy rain caused a crack more than 100 meters long to appear behind the mountain, a large rock rolled down and crushed a household's kitchen, pushing part of it down the cliff. Fearing danger, people decided to move elsewhere. At that time, the government identified 7 houses at risk of landslides, supporting each household with 7 million VND to relocate.

A deserted house in Khe O resettlement area. Photo: Duc Hung

According to Mr. Thang, in addition to worrying about landslides, many families left to do other jobs to improve their income. Because Khe O land is full of rocks and gravel, it is impossible to improve it to grow crops. "My wife and I and two other households in the village have economic difficulties and are old. If we move to a new place, we will not have money to build a house. So we are content to stay and do fishing along the rivers and raise poultry," he said.

13 years since 43 households left the village, Khe O resettlement area has deteriorated, the 4m wide, more than 50m long concrete road leading into the village is overgrown with weeds on both sides, the side roads are eroded by dirt and rocks. The houses that were once painted yellow and solidly built are now stained, moldy, the walls are peeling, and many household items are scattered inside. The kindergarten, the community cultural house... have all their roofs blown off, covered with bushes more than a meter high.

"Without people living there, Khe O looks desolate and dreary. The village is 4-5 km away from residential areas and Ban Ve town, so at night or during floods, we seem to be isolated from the outside world," said a resident.

Khe O village currently has 3 households remaining. Photo: Duc Hung

The leaders of Yen Na commune said that the whole commune has 3 resettlement areas for Ban Ve hydropower plant residents. Previously, due to urgent land clearance, the process of surveying the terrain and geology to establish a resettlement area in Khe O was not thorough. After a while, people saw landslides, remoteness, and their children went to school far away, so they left.

According to Mr. Nguyen Phung Hung, Head of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Tuong Duong district, 43 households when leaving Khe O to live elsewhere have not yet handed over the land to the locality. In the near future, specialized staff will survey and request that if anyone has no need to use the project, they return it, and then consider the next solution.

Ban Ve Hydropower Plant is the largest in the North Central region, located at the headwaters of the Ca River, Tuong Duong District, with a designed capacity of 320 MW; normal water level of 200 m; reservoir capacity of 1.8 billion m3; connected to the national grid in 2010. When implementing the project, 2,910 households with 13,735 people from 31 villages of 8 communes in the reservoir area had to be relocated.

Duc Hung

Source link: https://vnexpress.net/khu-tai-dinh-cu-chi-3-ho-dan-o-4675939.html