Locals demand speedy implementation of West Seti Hydropower Project

DHANGADHI, May 3:

The locals living around the proposed 750 MW West Seti Hydropower Project site have urged the Nepal Investment Board to expedite project construction work.

Upset by the lack of regular dissemination of information about the project, the locals have also urged the board to keep them updated. They say they have not been informed about the status of the project for the last one year.

"No one has shared any information about the project since last year," said Ratan Saud, president of West Seti Concern Group, a pressure group formed by locals. "Therefore, we are now worried about the future of the project."

According to Saud, the locals have been deprived of development works in the project area for the past 18 years citing the project.

"We have endured all sorts of deprivation," said Saud. "We never complained about it just in the hope that our lives would be better after the completion of the project. As the project gets delayed, we are growing anxious."

Studies have shown that the project will displace around 3,000 families in 17 VDCs of four districts -- Bajhang, Doti, Baitadi and Dadeldhura districts -- in the farwestern region.

According to the locals, the government has stopped building new infrastructures and maintaining the existing ones saying the villages will ultimately have to be shifted.

"We don´t even have basic amenities like drinking water," said Saud. "We have been forced to drink water straight out of the Seti River."We don´t have irrigation facilities, either. We have to depend on rainwater for planting crops."

The West Seti Hydropower Project, which was proposed in 1994 for the first time, was first handed over to the Snowy Mountain Engineering Co (SMEC), an Australian firm. When SMEC failed to build the project, the government scrapped its survey license and handed the project over to China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC) in February 2012 and then to CTGC´s subsidiary CWE Investment Corporation in August 2012. But the Chinese firm has yet to conduct feasibility study of the project.

    
 Source: Republica