Radio Free Asia

Construction firms bidding for approval to build permanent homes for flood victims in Laos must pay between 10 to 26 percent of the total cost of the project to local authorities if their bids are approved, sources in the country say.Government officials in Attapeu province, ...

Lawmakers in Laos are urging the government to be stricter on foreign business entities in the country in an effort to protect the environment and protect the livelihood of the people.Khamsaphone Xayavong, a member of parliament from Oumxay district, Oudomxay province in northern Laos, called ...

State employees in many provinces of Laos have not received their January salaries in violation of a recent government mandate that the workers be paid on the 25th of every month, indicating that the directive may be a toothless effort to resolve a longstanding problem ...

The government of Laos must ensure that people living in poverty are able to take part in key decision-making processes that affect their lives, rights groups said Wednesday, ahead of a fact-finding mission to the Southeast Asian nation by a United Nations expert.More  ...

Young people from the northern provinces of Laos are increasingly moving across the border to China in search of jobs and higher wages.Facing limited prospects at home, youth from Laos’ remote mountainous regions choose to become undocumented economic migrants in China’s neighboring Yunnan province, where ...

Garment factories in Laos are experiencing labor shortages as workers are looking to Thailand for greener pastures, sources say.A factory manager in the capital Vientiane who requested anonymity told RFA’s Lao Service earlier this month, “According to [results] of a survey we need about 10,000 ...

The railway project that would link landlocked Laos with China has been touted as a benefit to the Lao economy because it will lower the cost of exports and consumer goods while boosting socioeconomic development in the impoverished nation of nearly 7 million people.But the ...

Lao villagers living in the scenic Vang Vieng region north of the capital Vientiane are blocking attempts to survey their land for foreign-invested development, fearing they will be displaced from their homes by a new Chinese tourism project, sources in the Southeast Asian country say.The ...

Chemicals released into a river by a Chinese-owned banana farm near the Lao capital Vientiane killed over 300 kg of fish in November, prompting warnings by authorities to local villagers not to bathe or fish in the polluted stream, sources in the country say.The release, ...

Two Chinese-owned cement factories in the Vang Vieng district of Laos’ Vientiane Province are covering approximately 900 local families in at least four villages with dust and smog, threatening their health, local sources say.The affected villages of the northwestern province include Khanmark, Houa Ngam, Phonesoung and ...