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dam-l LS: More ADB News from Thailand
Groups tell ADB to halt loans to Thailand
CHIANG MAI – People’s organisations have officially declared their
opposition to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s loans, holding a press
conference here yesterday to demand the bank halt its lending to Thailand
and withdraw its conditional loan projects.
The groups also confirmed they would stage protests during the bank’s
annual meeting here this week as well as organise their own forum to assess
the effects of the ADB loan on the poor majority, especially farmers.
Watcharin Ubprajong, vice president of the Northern Farmers’ Alliance, said
the 34 people’s organisations would submit four main demands to the ADB and
pressure the bank to hold a special meeting with them.
The demands include a stop to ADB loans to Thailand, withdrawal of the
controversial Agriculture Structure Adjustment project and the Social
Structure Adjustment Project, which are subject to loan conditions, and the
loan for a central wastewater treatment project in Samut Prakan’s Klong Dan
area.
“We don’t mean to make the nation lose face by protesting while the
international financial institution holds its meeting, but we simply don’t
want to be in debt,” Banrung Khayotha, an adviser to the Assembly of the
Poor, said at the press conference.
“The effect of the loans and their conditions will be to make the poor
poorer, and it compels us to protest. We have no other choice to make the
bank and the government listen to our voice,” Watcharin added.
Somchai Sirichai, an adviser to the Northern Farmers’ Network, said that
several months of discussion among the people’s organisations had
pinpointed seven loan conditions that would put a severe burden on Thai
people, especially the poor.
These include the charging of farmers for use of irrigation water, free
access to land ownership for foreign investors, permission for
multinational corporations to use forest areas for tourism and forestry,
new policies arising from the loan conditions that would cause public
hardship, and the privatisation of all public hospitals, public
universities and highgrade state enterprises.
The number of protesters was not disclosed, but Somchai said the initial
agreement among the organisations was to gather as many as possible. He
also claimed a number of village headmen and community leaders in Chiang
Mai and nearby provinces had been ordered by the government to prevent
villagers from joining the protests.
“It is ridiculous,” Somchai said. “These people want to express their
opinion of the policies which will directly affect their lives, but the
government stops them instead of listening to them.”
“The government had tried for several weeks to paint a picture of violent
protests in the public mind.” Bamrung said. “The government knows well that
it need not have any worry about violence, but it insisted on sending a
three to four thousandstrong force here. I don’t understand what it fears.
Blocking the roads? I think we know well enough that it is the police who
block the roads while the protesters walk along the road without stopping
traffic,” he added.
Numbers of activists, workers of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and
villagers affected by the ADBsponsored projects have begun arriving in
Chiang Mai.
Some foreign activists like the NGOs Forum on the ADB are also in the city
to prepare for the ADB’s annual meeting from Saturday to Monday. Apart from
farmers, other groups expected to stage protests during the meeting include
representatives of Aids patients, students and labour.
BY Kamol Sukin
The Nation, May 2, 2000
_______________________
Water levy is the last straw
Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post, May 4, 2000
This is the year 2000. Those men in striped suits and ties at the Asian
Development Bank can no longer take people on the ground for granted as
they will find out this week in Chiang Mai.
The people are fed up and angry. And rightly so. For the past 40 years,
countless farm families in Thailand have lost their lands, livelihoods and
health through various mega-projects funded by multilateral development
banks, including the ADB. But the ADB's latest scheme to impose water
charges on poor farmers is the last straw.
Try to put yourself in the farmers' shoes. Your river was dammed, your
villages were flooded, your forests ruined and your source of sustenance
destroyed forever. Yet you stoically struggle on by continuing farming
amidst fluctuating commodity prices, higher farm investment and more debt.
Your communities and families are disintegrated because the authorities
robbed your river, your source of life. Now, they have the nerve to make
you pay for what little is left.
What will you do when you're cornered? Charging farmers a water fee is part
of loan conditions imposed on Thailand in the name of efficient water use.
It is a step toward the privatisation of water. It is also part of the
bank's overall scheme to press Thailand towards the privatisation of other
public services including health and education in the name of market-based
efficiency.
What does this all mean? It means the end of the state's moral
responsibility to ensure that all have equal access to state services. It
means the reigning of profit philosophy and business power. For when nature
and public services are turned into commodities, only those with purchasing
power can get it. No more free services. Too bad if you're poor.
The people's anger against the ADB is understandable. Four decades of
development misery has made the poor realise that their poverty is the
outcome of top-down, centrally-planned management of natural resources that
does not respect their rights and customary system of use. Through long
struggles together, they've reached a common resolution: the
centrally-planned system must go to rescue their livelihoods and the
environment.
This is why the key words in the people's movements are community rights in
natural resources management, decentralisation and public participation in
any public polices that affect their lives.
For them, this is real democracy. Parliamentary politics, whereby
politicians collude with businesses to exploit the people and nature is not
democracy. It is a form of tyranny.
As part of political reform, the local people's customary rights over
natural resources management is also enshrined in the new constitution.
It is obvious. The ADB loan conditions to privatise water, which boils down
to the strengthening of the centrally-planned system and the dismissal of
community rights, is not only against human rights, it is also against
democracy. For the middle-class, do not think you will be spared.
The privatisation of public health and education will hit your pockets
hard. It will also hit your job security.
ADB conditions aim to change local structures to facilitate the entry of
multinational businesses. Restructuring is a code word for lay-offs. Which
means things will get much, much worse before they have a chance to get
better-if at all. The ADB and other multilateral development banks forget
one thing. Reducing the role of governments in public welfare will destroy
the governments' legitimacy in the eyes of the people. People won't
tolerate illegitimate governments. So expect political instability-and the
losses of loan investments. That is the ending of the modern fable about
greedy banks that kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
- Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.
______________________________
ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
Finance stands firm on charging for irrigation
Agriculture wants loan clause removerd
Wichit Sirithaveeporn and Ploenpote Atthakor, Bangkok Post, May 4, 2000
The Finance Ministry insists that it must charge for water from new
irrigation schemes, which will be paid for by a loan from the Asian
Development Bank, to ensure that investment assists in expanding available
cultivated land.
The decision will almost certainly lead to confrontation with farmer groups
and non-government organisations which have insisted all along they are
opposed to the imposition of fees on water projects.
Activists are now gathering in Chiang Mai where they will demonstrate at
the annual meeting of the bank later this week. The water charge attached
to the loan is an item on their protest agenda.
Sommai Phasee, deputy finance permanent secretary, said by sharing costs
with farmers, maximum gains would be achieved from irrigation systems built
through new infrastructure.
Revamping the charge system is one condition of a US$600 million
agricultural programme loan taken out by the government with the ADB.
Currently, the government collects an annual fee from farmers to help cover
costs of waterworks investment.
Charges are collected until 20% of the total investment costs are paid,
with the remaining 80% picked up by the state.
Under the ADB loan, the system would increase costs borne by beneficiaries
of new investment to 30% next year and up to 50% by 2003.
Mr Sommai said the government had sought to minimise the costs paid by
farmers, noting that in some areas, annual charges totalled 100 baht a rai.
"Once the investment costs are repaid, no more charges are collected," he
said. Officials argue that revamping the existing system is necessary to
ensure efficient use of resources and fund new investment in water
infrastructure, helping boost the amount of land under irrigation.
But local farmer groups have resisted the plan, complaining that costs
would increase at a time when commodities prices are already at low levels.
Kingkorn Narinthorn na Ayutthaya, a co-ordinator of the Northern
Development Foundation,
said farmers have paid their share of taxes. To collect more fees would
amount to double-taxation.
While some farmers would be able to afford the cost, the majority, who are
small and poor, would be left out from the state service.
It was worrying that the state would assume monopolistic control over the
management of water resource, thus depriving local people of the right to
manage local resources.
The Agriculture and Co-operatives Ministry, under pressure from local
farmers groups, is moving to lift the water charge condition from the ADB loan.
In any case, the Finance Ministry insists that the principle behind the
condition remains sound policy.
The ministries will have to settle the issue before submitting details on
how waterworks investment will be managed to the ADB for final loan approval.
Thailand currently has 18 ongoing projects funded through loans from the
ADB, totalling some $1.6 billion.
Projects include a rural enterprise credit project run by the Bank for
Agriculture and Agricultural Co-operatives and a power transmission
expansion scheme run by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand.