The three provinces of Dak Lak, Kon Tum, and Dak Nong have many resettlement areas with houses and infrastructure built, but they are abandoned because no one lives there. The buildings are damaged and have become piles of rubble over time.
A typical example is the resettlement area of Dak Doat village, Dak Pet commune, Dak Glei district (Kon Tum province) with an investment of 16 billion VND, completed in 2012 to resettle 64 households in the landslide disaster area. However, the households could only stay there for a short time, then returned to their old place to live.
Why do people leave the resettlement area with better houses, roads, electricity and water than the old village? The answer is that there is a place to live but no food.
People in the resettlement area, but they do not know how to make a living by other jobs, so they have to return to farming.
The people cannot be blamed, but the government has not taken into account the "water" when building resettlement areas. Building resettlement areas is only part of the work, the rest is the livelihood of the people.
There are also places that provide production land for resettled people, but they still do not receive houses or land.
That is the Dak P’lao resettlement area in Dak Glong district (Dak Nong) built by Dong Nai 3 Hydropower Company with a budget of more than 800 billion VND. People are not only provided with housing, but also land for production. However, people do not want to live there because of the scarcity of domestic water, the steep land, and no irrigation water.
Or like resettlement area No. 2 (Cu Bong commune), Ea Kar district, Dak Lak province, invested 300 billion VND, but people did not move there because there was not enough land for production.
The authorities of the Central Highlands provinces have made great efforts to help people settle down. Our ancestors said "settling down is the way to make a living", but the reality of life in the resettlement areas shows that people must "make a living" in order to "settling down". If they cannot find a way to make a living, they must return to their old villages and live in the old way.
Therefore, the problem for the government is that, along with investing in building resettlement areas, it must support people to stabilize their lives through agricultural production or other jobs.
Without calculating the livelihood for people when they move to a new place, resettlement areas continue to be abandoned, wasting money and land resources.
Not to mention, if we cannot keep people, there will be a risk of encroachment on forestry land and forest land to grow agricultural crops.
