Radio Free Asia

Residents of 18 villages in two districts of Laos’ capital Vientiane have refused to accept state compensation for loss of land to a local toll expressway project, saying that the amount offered is much lower than market value.Officials are offering the nearly 160 families from ...

Heavy monsoonal rains in northeastern Laos ripped through a small one-megawatt hydropower dam in Xieng Khouang province’s Pek district earlier this week, causing extensive damage and flooding rice fields and property, local residents said Wednesday.“Because of heavy rainfall and too much water, the dam couldn’t ...

Many Lao villagers who were forced to relocate for construction on the Laos-China railway are still waiting for compensation from the government, while others who have received payments say the payments are much lower than they had expected.The railway project linking landlocked Laos with China ...

A new Mekong river dam in Laos’ Luang Prabang province will displace up to 465 families this month, the latest in the continuing trend of hydropower projects forcing villagers to relocate all over the country.Residents of 10 villages in Luang Prabang’s Chomphet district must be ...

Nearly one year after the collapse of a saddle dam that caused a disaster described as Laos’ worst flooding in decades, struggling survivors are reluctantly accepting compensation for about 50 percent of their total property losses.The disaster occurred on July 23, 2018, when a saddle ...

Villagers living near the Mekong River in Thailand and Laos are finding it difficult to cope with sudden releases of water from dams upstream in China.More than 200 famililes living in Laos’ Bokeo province have suffered because of sudden increases in the height of the ...

On an expanse of recently cleared land, laborers prepare seedlings for a new Chinese banana plantation that is taking shape near the Lao capital in defiance of a central government prohibition on such projects.Radio Free Asia located the 30-hectare site about five kilometers (3 miles) ...

The Lao government is embarking on an plan to inspect all 55 dams in the country nearly one year after the collapse of a saddle dam that caused a disaster described as Laos’ worst flooding in decades.The disaster occurred on July 23, 2018, when a ...

A Chinese-backed firm is growing bananas on land promised by the government of Laos as compensation to survivors of a 2018 dam collapse that that has been described as the country’s worst flooding in decades, RFA’s Lao Service has learned.The disaster occurred last July, when ...

Poor construction methods, with soil used in place of concrete, caused a fatal hydropower dam collapse last year in Laos, a panel of water experts has concluded, prompting a rejection of its findings by the South Korean firm that built the project.The disaster occurred on ...