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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

Lao People's Democratic Republic

Working with migrant workers in Thailand: an unsung heroine

Submitted by Trinn Suwannapha on Wed, 2012-03-07 18:21

ยังมีอีกที่ ภาษาไทย

Khun Patima (right) works with migrant workers in Thailand.

 

On 11/11/11, in the midst of the Thailand flood crisis, the Labor Rights Promotion Network Foundation (LPN), one of the organizations who received World Bank support through the Civil Society and Small Grants Program, provided relief. Not just for Thais affected by the deluge but also for migrant workers who had little access to help. Through Project Manager Patima Tangprachayakul, I learned that LPN was busy with much more than just the flood relief effort. In an assignment for One Day on Earth: Women at Work, a campaign aimed at increasing awareness for the important contributions of women in the workplace, I got the chance to join Khun Patima on a visit to a flood evacuation center set up for migrants. She told me about her work on human rights, how her work has added value to her life, and how one woman could give her energy for a better world.

ปฏิมา ผู้หญิงปิดทองหลังพระ กับการทำงานช่วยเหลือแรงงานข้ามชาติ

Submitted by Trinn Suwannapha on Wed, 2012-03-07 18:10

Available in English

ในวันที่ 11 พฤศจิกายน 2554 (11/11/11) ท่ามกลางวิกฤตน้ำท่วม มูลนิธิเครือข่ายส่งเสริมคุณภาพชีวิตแรงงาน ซึ่งเป็นหนึ่งในองค์กรเอกชนที่ได้รับการสนับสนุนจากธนาคารโลกผ่านโครงการ Civil Society and Small Grants Programได้ทำงานบรรเทาทุกข์ให้กับผู้ประสบอุทกภัย พวกเขาทำงานไม่เฉพาะแค่สำหรับคนไทยที่กำลังตกความลำบาก แต่ยังยื่นมือให้กับคนงานต่างชาติที่ไม่ค่อยได้รับความช่วยเหลือ สิ่งที่ผมได้เรียนรู้จากคุณปฏิมา ตั้งปรัชญากูล ผู้จัดการโครงการของมูลนิธิฯ คือ ทางมูลนิธิฯ มีภาระกิจนอกเหนือไปจากการบรรเทาทุกข์น้ำท่วมมาก ระหว่างการถ่ายทำ One Day on Earth: Women at Work ซึ่งเป็นการรณรงค์ในเรื่องความสำคัญของผู้หญิงในสถานที่ทำงาน ผมได้มีโอกาสติดตามคุณปฏิมาไปที่ศูนย์อพยพผู้ประสบภัยน้ำท่วมที่จัดตั้งขึ้นสำหรับคนงานข้ามชาติ เธอพูดถึงงานของเธอเกี่ยวกับสิทธิมนุษยชน งานของเธอที่ช่วยเหลือคนอื่นได้เสริมคุณค่าชีวิตของเธออย่างไร และการที่ผู้หญิงคนหนึ่งสามารถใช้พลังของเธอช่วยสร้างโลกให้ดีขึ้นได้อย่างไร

สำนักงานมูลนิธิฯ ตั้งอยู่ที่จังหวัดสมุทรสาคร เมืองอุตสาหกรรมรอบนอกกรุงเทพฯ ที่นั่นมีแรงงานข้ามชาติประมาณ 400,000 คนจากเมียนมาร์ ลาว และกัมพูชา ครึ่งหนึ่งเป็นคนงานผิดกฎหมาย และส่วนมากไม่รู้สิทธิของตัวเอง โครงการของมูลนิธิฯ ที่ดำเนินงานกับ Civil Society and Small Grants Program มุ่งที่การให้ความรู้พื้นฐานในเรื่องสิทธิ์ เช่น การเข้ารักษาพยาบาล และการพูดคุยกับนางจ้าง คุณปฏิมาเน้นว่า คนงานต่างชาติก็มีสิทธิ์เช่นกัน และเราทุกคนควรได้รับการคุ้มครองโดยสิทธิมนุษยชนสากลอย่างเท่าเทียมกั

Laos: How the Nam Theun 2 dam is managed during flood events

Submitted by William Rex on Sun, 2011-10-16 17:31

William RexIt’s been an unusually severe rainy season in some parts of Lao PDR, with several typhoons passing over after making landfall in

Vietnam.  Thailand is also severely hit, with Bangkok bracing itself for floods as I write this. Floods are a regular part of life in this part of the world, but they can nevertheless be devastating for people impacted by them:  people may lose their entire rice crop if flood waters don’t recede in time; remote communities may lose access to the outside world as parts of their only road are washed away; and public health problems can multiply water and sanitation facilities are overwhelmed.

A large hydropower project like Nam Theun 2 (NT2) has a significant effect on water flows around the project, and so inevitably people begin to question whether NT2 is somehow making the local floods worse.  Questions around project’s role in exacerbating natural floods started even before Nam Theun 2 started operating (see a blog post on this back in 2009), and it has sporadically been blamed during this wet season as well.  A lot of these arguments stem from some pretty basic misunderstandings of how NT2 works, so although this information is already in the public domain, I thought I’d produce a simple summary here with reference to the attached map.

Power to the Poor in Laos brings electricity to (almost) all

Submitted by Alfredo Baño Leal on Mon, 2011-05-23 11:31

Building on the story about rural electrification in Laos, let me talk to you about an innovative concept under the electrification program umbrella that focused on those more disadvantaged and with fewer opportunities. This new concept is the Power to the Poor program (P2P).

The P2P scheme was launched in September 2008, although it was identified a few years earlier, in 2005. At that time, a social impact survey was carried out and among all data analyzed, one indicator was outstanding: the pick-up rate in the villages recently electrified was on average only a 70%. What was happening with the remaining 30% of households that were not being connected? It was not a design problem as those households were just a few meters from the electric post. It was, as with many problems in life, a financial problem: the connection fee charged by the power utility, Electricité du Laos (EdL), was too expensive to be paid upfront by the poorest households.

Electrifying Laos: The Movie

Submitted by Alfredo Baño Leal on Fri, 2010-10-22 10:13

The history of the power sector in Lao PDR is relatively new. 15 years ago, Laos counted with just a couple of large hydropower plants, and a meager 16% of the households throughout the country counted with electricity access, mostly concentrated in Vientiane, the capital city, and few provincial towns such as Luang Prabang and Savannakett.

Infrastructures needed an urgent push to help the economy start up and reduce the extreme poverty rates of the population. During the beginning of the 90’s, several donors including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) began different infrastructure development programs, including roads, water supply and electrification.

Intervention management of wildlife in Nam Theun 2

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Wed, 2010-09-08 16:51
A baby black gibbon

I did my PhD field research on black gibbons. I mean really black—black skin, black fur everywhere, and even the whites of their eyes seemed black when they were at the top of tall forest trees and I was wandering around on the forest floor. How I longed to be in the position of my peers studying zebras or lions or elephants—they could distinguish dozens of individuals by their markings. I couldn’t even find a candidate for Scarface or Four-Toes or Ripped-Ear. Over time I could tell my group’s adults (whose black nether regions also appeared identical at a distance) apart by their individual mannerisms, but then only when I had a good view, which was rare. The inability to reliably distinguish between them limited the extent to which I could ‘experiment’ with them and thereby collect new levels of information.

What difference do 16.5 kms of rural roads make? An answer from the effect of NT2 revenues in Laos

Submitted by Victoria Minoian on Wed, 2010-07-07 05:02
The author at one of the roads renovated with NT2 funds (2010 rainy season).

Last week I hopped on one of our office cars and led into the Southern province of Champassack, along with our filming crew, to collect some stories related to the recent roads improvements made out of the NT2 Revenues (386kb pdf). Following the sale of electricity to neighboring Thailand in early March, monies have started to flow into the National Treasury of Laos.

As the reader and follower of NT2 may know, the project offers a Revenue Management Agreement (24.46mb pdf) component which has been designed to strengthen the overall Government of Lao’s Public Financial Management Program. For the specific case of NT2, the Program was implemented via budget classification and monitoring systems, physical progress of expenditures at the sector ministries of the identified eligible programs where the monies are allocated and increased capacities to conduct expenditure audits, among others.

Carbon Expo highlights China's experience in Clean Development Mechanism

Submitted by Florian Kitt on Thu, 2010-05-27 17:56

Ok. We are back again @ Carbon Expo. This year in Cologne. The German weather cannot really keep up with Barcelona (were Carbon Expo was held in 2009) but we are keeping the spirits up and the opening event proved to be very interesting with a speech by the German Environment Minister, Norbert Roettgen.

On his round across the fairground the Minister then visited the China booth and the East Asia Pavilion, where Thailand, Mongolia, Lao, and Indonesia and China are exhibiting. Jiao Xiaoping, Deputy Director General, CDM Fund, China, welcomed the Minister and presented him with the latest report on "Clean Development Mechanism in China". We'll soon have it up here.

Does the chance to access information carry a duty from those who ask?

Submitted by Victoria Minoian on Thu, 2010-04-29 11:52
Accessing information is a right that comes associated with—at least—the homework of reading, studying and understanding such information. (February 2010, World Bank booth at Library Week in Vientiane, WB photo)

Those who help disseminate information at the World Bank have a rule about the topics of disclosure and access to information. We do not talk about access and disclosure, we help exercise it. This blog is not about accessing information or disclosing it. Rather it is about reflecting on the use and exercise of accessed information from the two sides: that of the originator and that of the receiver. If the reader allows me a basic judgment, I think the exercise of accessing information comes associated with, at a minimum, the basic task of reading. Do you agree?  If you do, you may want to continue reading this blog.

Nam Theun 2 – How are the resettled people doing overall? In their own words… (part 2 of 2)

Submitted by Nina Fenton on Tue, 2010-03-30 02:07

In the last blog we saw that most resettlers are broadly satisfied with the resettlement process and are positive and optimistic about their lives as a whole. But…how do they feel about their lives in comparison to the very different world they lived in before relocation? What are the changes they value or regret?
 
The respondents were asked directly how they felt about life now compared with life before resettlement. The overwhelming majority think that life has got much better, and that the vulnerable households are even more likely to feel this way than the non-vulnerable—no vulnerable households felt that life had got worse.