The authorities Lao investigate the managers responsible for a hydroelectric dam, which is a decade of delay in another sign of surfacing problems of the frenzy of creating the country’s dams.
An official publication of the Communist Party in power reported on March 20 that a former deputy director of the State Electricity Company and four other people who supervised the construction of the Nam dam had diverted him from public funds.
Construction began in 2013 and was to take three years but is only three quarters, the Party Inspection Magazine said. The company building the dam in the Laos center has received 89 million US dollars, which is almost the total value of the construction contract, despite not delivering, he said.
Billions of dollars have been invested over the past two decades in the construction of hydroelectric dams on the Mekong and its tributaries in Laos to export electricity to neighboring countries such as Thailand and Vietnam and as far as Singapore.
The rate of unhindered development continued tirelessly despite a regional outcry against the likely destruction of freshwater fisheries which are a crucial source of proteins and means of subsistence for millions. The country of seven million people also suffers from regular breakdowns during periods of peak demand due to an creaky electrical network and its contractual obligations to export electricity.
The party’s publication indicated that the accused included the foreign president of a private company, a former deputy director of Laos electrici, the former Dam construction chief and the former chiefs and the assistant chiefs of the dam construction project.
He said the government had lost income because the 30 megawatts dam had not generated electricity as planned. The government is also about to reimburse the loan which financed the construction of the dam and interest, according to the report.
The Lao government summed up the case and sent it to the Vientiane people’s prosecutor’s office, said the Communist Party organ.
Related stories
Explained: why research on the Xayaburi dam in Laos remains opaque
The New Mekong Dam Sparks project has concern in Laos and Thailand
Laos agrees to build a dam in a distant mountainous area near the border of Vietnam
The cost of all the dams built or planned in Laos is around $ 40 billion and funded by foreign investments, according to Pon Souvannasen, associate professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts who research on hydroelectricity in Laos.
Banks in the region are eager to finance the Lao hydroelectricity dams because these loans offer higher yields than retail banking services and they are not confronted with obstacles to loans such as binding environmental impact assessments, said Pon.
“These regional banks were able to permanently integrate money into Project after the project after the project because they did not meet international environmental standards,” she said to a seminar on Lao hydroelectricity this month.
The emerging problems in the hydroelectric industry were highlighted, said Pon, by the 2018 collapse of a saddle dam which was part of a larger hydroelectricity project under construction in the province of Champasak.
Billions of cubic feet of water flooded downstream villages in the province of Attapeu, killing 71 people and moving more than 14,000 when they have erased all or part of 19 villages.
Edited by Mike Firn.