A ceremony was held at the Keoudom district’s main club in Vientiane Province to provide compensation to families affected by the construction work around the Nam Ngum Hydropower Dam 1, especially in Sengsavang village.
The ceremony saw the attendance of Mr. Ounethouang Khaophanh, Deputy Minister of Information, Culture, and Tourism, as well as provincial and district leaders and affected families.
Sisavath Sengphachan, the director of Vientiane Province’s Information, Culture, and Tourism Department, said that the construction, which received funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), was a project aimed to develop infrastructure in the area and build tourism facilities that would create jobs and increase income for locals, and also abide by ASEAN tourism standards.
Initially, the project allocated only a budget of LAK 142 million to compensate the affected residents. However, since the project’s construction impacted 90 public and private buildings, this amount was soon revised to ensure that those affected were compensated, fairly.
According to Pasaxon, 19 severely affected families will receive USD 9,000 in cash per family (LAK 152 million) to ensure that they have their own permanent homes and can use the money to rebuild their lives.
This compensation amount includes land development subsidies, housing development subsidies, and infrastructure facilities subsidies, totaling a budget of LAK 3 billion.
Since the project did not permit tourism services to operate in the area during the 18-month construction period; however, relevant stakeholders who incurred losses have already been compensated for about LAK 8.5 billion.
Last week, PM Sonexay Siphandone also visited Vientiane Province to encourage local authorities to further develop tourism in the area, and he specifically discussed the development of tourist attractions around the Nam Ngum Dam.
