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dam-l AFP Jun 15, 1999 Three Gorges Resettlement
YICHANG, China, Jun 15, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse)
China has abandoned plans to resettle all the people
displaced by the massive Three Gorges hydro-electric
dam project locally and will instead move some to
other regions.
"We initially had a policy of relocating the people
displaced by the dam within the region," said project
chief Lu Youmei.
"Prime Minister Zhu Rongji decided they could be
resettled outside the Three Gorges, even in distant
regions if they wanted."
Lu, head of China Yangtze Three Gorges Project
Development Corp., the group in charge of the dam
development, said this "major change," decided after a
visit by Zhu at the end of last year, would "reduce
the pressure on the environment."
Completion of the dam in 2009 will see the creation of
a reservoir submerging an area of 632 square
kilometers (253 square miles), displacing 1.13 million
people, according to official estimates, while Chinese
media reports say the figure could be 1.8 million
people.
The number of children not officially registered in
China, because of the one-child policy, could
significantly inflate the affected population.
Lu said he did not have figures for the number of
people who could be resettled outside of central Hubei
province and the municipality of Chongqing, where the
reservoir will be.
"It all depends on the local authorities," he added,
speaking at the group headquarters in the town of
Yichang, the closest one in central Hubei to the dam.
"It is they who handle the funds for the relocation
policy.
"They could decide to resettle the displaced in new
development zones nearby, or the funds could be used
to incite them to move to distant regions."
In March 1998, a senior official in Chongqing, where
85 percent of the population to be evacuated lives,
called on other provinces to help housing some of the
displaced.
Chongqing "has not enough room for them in terms of
cultivable lands and financial support," said deputy
mayor Cheng Jiyu.
The official media last year reported that the
resettlement program had been delayed due to problems
with construction and the embezzlement of funds by
local cadres.
According to the reports, only 73 percent of the
67,000 people due to be rehoused in 1998 were
resettled, and only 60 percent of the necessary
housing had been completed.
According to Lu, 100,000 people had moved by the end
of 1998 and number will swell to between 150,000 to
180,000 by the end of this year. Some 500,000 are due
to have been rehoused by the time the waters begin
rising in late 2003.
But the social difficulties caused by the dam have
been aggravated by the painful public sector reforms
which have led to millions of job losses as thousands
of unprofitable factories are shut down.
The chairman of the dam company said Zhu Rongji has
decided not to finance the relocation of any factories
which are "technologically behind" and they could be
"simply closed."
But the policy could leave a bitter legacy in the
Three Gorges region, where workers risk losing their
homes and their jobs in one swoop. ((c) 1999 Agence
France Presse)