New start delivers little hope

Hmong children play at KM 52 Village but aid agencies say they may be at risk after moving from the mountains of Laos. Picture / Reuters

Bongyae Yah sits on his haunches smoking a cigarette as his children chase chickens around the barren ground of their purpose-built village.

There is little for him to do to pass his time. He is far from the land he calls home, with no work and too poor to send his children to school.

This was supposed to be a better life for Yah and his family. Instead he is just another victim of a development programme that is backfiring in communist-run Laos.

In a quest to lift itself out of poverty, the Government has been enticing minority groups to new lowland settlements with promises of basic facilities, schools and healthcare.

But aid groups say the relocation drive may actually end up doing more harm than good as migrants leave their ancestral jungle homes for communities - such as this Hmong village north of the capital - that lack adequate facilities or jobs.

"We don't have any work to do. We don't have money. We have to ask our cousins for food and we can't send our children to school," said Yah, 40, who lives with his seven children in KM 52 Village, named after its distance from the capital.

His dreams of a better life turned to disappointment after he was met with 2kg of rice and little else - a plight that awaits hundreds of others under the relocation plan, which began in earnest in 1986 as the shutters started to come off the economy.

As many as 50 per cent of villages are already thought to have moved in the last 20 years. But foreign aid groups say the scheme is compounding poverty rather than eradicating it - and violating the basic rights of minorities in the process.

Aid groups say the problems may come from too few resources for too many people.

Inadequate land for rice has translated into less food to harvest and declining soil fertility due to population pressures, a UN study found.

Resettlement may be exposing minority groups to unfamiliar diseases such as gastrointestinal infections, parasites and mosquito-borne fevers against which they have little to no immunity.

- REUTERS