P honsavanh, the capital of Xieng Khuang province, is home to broad avenues and pleasant views. Over the past decade, it has become more developed with hotels and guesthouses crowding the streets.
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A street view of Phonsavanh, the provincial capital of Xieng Khuang. |
The government is now spending several billion kip on streetlights and improvements to the roads. Currently the town is quite dark at night.
Four roads in the provincial capital, covering a length of 14km, will be lit at night from next month.
Locals are pleased with the introduction of so many streetlights, and some said they have been waiting for the lights since the country was liberated in 1975.
However, Xieng Khuang province lags behind in its development, largely because it suffers from a very high level of unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination, Director of the provincial Planning and Investment Department, Mr Duangchith Xaywang, said on Thursday.
“Many domestic and foreign investors want to invest in the province, but they need the provincial authorities to clear UXO for them so they can build factories,” he told Vientiane Times .
“But we do not have the required budget for UXO clearance.”
Some investors have spent their own money to clear bombs from the sites where they want to build factories, he pointed out.
In order to develop the province for economic growth in the future, the provincial authorities are urging improvement to roads and expansion of the national electricity grid in the area.
More than 50 percent of villages in the province now have access to the national electricity grid, he said.
“The Lao National UXO Programme (UXO Lao) is not made of money and it works for humanitarian assistance,” said Public Relations Officer of the National Regulatory Authority UXO/Mine Action Sector in Lao PDR, Mr Bounpheng Sisawath.
“If investors want us to clear land for their factories, I'm afraid we cannot do that as we do not serve that purpose.”
UXO Lao works to clear munitions in heavily contaminated provinces in Laos, he said. Its task is to lower the number of UXO-related deaths and injuries around the country, and open up more agricultural land, especially in the 47 poorest districts.
UXO Lao clearance teams therefore focus on public land, particularly sites for the building of schools, markets and health care centres. In addition, it removes sub-surface explosives from sites where government development projects have been proposed, such as roads and irrigation channels.
It is estimated that out of the 2 million tonnes of bombs, including 288 million cluster bombs, that were dropped on Laos in US bombing raids between 1964 and 1973, about 30 percent did not detonate.
During this time, a total of 580,000 deadly bombing missions were conducted. That's one bombing mission every eight minutes around the clock for nine years.
By Khonesavanh Latsaphao
