HÀ NỘI — Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc has approved a socio-economic development plan for resettlement areas following the construction of the Sơn La hydropower plant.

The plan will be implemented between 2018 and 2025 in 82 communes in Sơn La, Điện Biên and Lai Châu provinces.

Ahead of the plant’s construction, as many as 21,820 households, comprising 93,201 people, in these provinces were relocated.

The Sơn La hydropower plant is one of the key national projects to supply electricity for socio-economic development, industrialisation and modernisation. It will also play a significant role in preventing floods during the rainy season and providing water in the dry season to residents in the country’s north-west region.

The development plan aims to promote agricultural production, increase the rate of trained rural workers and improve the spiritual and material life of people after sustainable resettlement.

It targets to increase the per capita income of the local people by two folds by 2020 from 2014 and reduce the rate of poor households to below 10 per cent by 2020. The per capita income is expected to increase by three folds by 2025 and the number of poor households by that year is expected to reduce to zero, according to the plan.

The rate of households using safe water is expected to increase to 90 per cent by 2020 and to 100 per cent by 2025.

The plan also aims to train and change the jobs of more than 47,000 rural workers by 2020.

It will focus on upgrading and building infrastructure in the resettled areas in Sơn La, Điện Biên and Lai Châu as well as stabilise the living conditions and production of 500 households in Quỳnh Nhai and Mường La districts in Sơn La province who were affected due to a shortage of land or by landslides and flash floods.

The Sơn La hydropower plant, which became operational in 2013, has six generators and a designed capacity of 2,400MW. It supplies an average of 10.2 billion kWh per year to the national grid. — VNS