Vietnam MPs OK multi-billion-dollar hydro project despite safety fears
HANOI - The Vietnamese National Assembly Friday approved a multi-billion-dollar hydroelectric
power project despite widespread concern among MPs over its safety and the number of people it would
displace.
The parliament's office declined to say what percentage of MPs had backed the scheme, saying only that it had
been passed.
The vote had orginally been scheduled for Wednesday but was delayed after a majority of MPs expressed
reservations.
"Most MPs argued that more work had to be one on the safety of the project and its size and location," the Ho
Chi Minh City daily Thanh Nien (Youth) reported Thursday.
The bill adopted by MPs leaves the government's hands largely open on the scale of the project to be
constructed.
One of the options is deemed too small to be economically unviable, according to the Saigon Times Daily.
Of the others, 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.
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.
"We cannot support the price that will have to be paid by local residents for the project's construction," said
MP Cu Hoa Van.
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.
The scheme's approval by the National Assembly two weeks after its adoption by the elite politburo of the
ruling communist party is a relief for the Vietnamese authorities.
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. Foreign correspondents remain barred from attending all but the
opening day of each parliamentary session.
Agence France Presse - June 29, 2001.
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