Controversial Vietnam dam project hits opposition among MPs
HANOI - A multi-billion-dollar hydroelectric power project, which was approved by Vietnam's ruling
communist party earlier this month, has run into opposition among the country's increasingly independent MPs,
the official media reported Thursday.
The National Assembly put off voting on the project until Friday amid widespread misgivings about the safety
of the project and the number of people who would be displaced, the Ho Chi Minh City daily Thanh Nien
(Youth) said.
"Most MPs argued that more work had to be one on the safety of the project and its size and location," the
paper said.
"I am really worried about this project because no convincing assurances have been given about its safety," it
quoted Nguyen Thi Hoai Thu, an MP from the southern province of Tien Giang, as telling Wednesday's session
of parliament.
The province of Son La, where the project is planned, lies in Vietnam's earthquake-prone northern mountains,
one of the main causes of concern among those questioning the dam's safety.
"If too much water were to cause a breach in the dam, downstream Hoa Binh (dam) would collapse and,
within two hours after that, all buildings in Hanoi of five storeys or less would be totally inundated," the
English-language Saigon Times Daily reported last week.
Other MPs criticised the scale of disruption that would be caused to the province's mainly ethnic minority
inhabitants, up to 100,000 of whom would have to be resettled.
"We cannot support the price that will have to be paid by local residents for the project's construction," said
MP Cu Hoa Van.
Thu criticised Industry Minister Dang Vu Chu for not giving more specific details of the government's plans.
The report, which Chu submitted to the assembly last week, contained three separate proposals for the dam,
one of which was deemed economically unviable, according to the Saigon Times Daily.
Of the other two proposals, one is for a 265-metre (875-foot) high dam, that would submerge more than
44,700 hectares (110,000 acres) of land, including a 41 kilometre (25 mile) section of a national highway, and
require the resettlement of 100,000 people.
The other is for a more modest dam of 215 metres (710 feet) which would submerge 18,000 hectares (45,000
acres) and displace 16,000 people.
"How can we vote on the project when the government hasn't yet even decided how big the dam will be?"
asked Thu.
She called on the government to resubmit the project to the National Assembly at its next session in September
after carrying out further studies.
Diplomats in any case question how Vietnam will fund a project which is expected to cost as much as four
billion dollars given the reluctance of Western lenders to finance hydroelectric schemes forcing large-scale
displacement of people.
They also question the economic need for the power project when Vietnam has just sealed a major gas deal
with a consortium led by oil giant British Petroleum that promises to secure 40 percent of the nation's current
electricity demand by 2006.
After decades of being little more than a rubber stamp, the National Assembly has begun to flex its legislative
muscle in recent years.
Earlier this month MPs dared to vote down a government bill that would have given district magistrates far
wider powers because of fears it would lead to an explosion in the prison population and widespread
miscarriages of justice.
But the newfound openeness only goes so far. The office of the National Assembly declined to discuss
Wednesday's debate on the Son La dam and foreign correspondents remain barred from attending all but the
opening day of each parliamentary session.
Agence France Presse - June 28, 2001.
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