Work Stops On Dam Project

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32073, 22 August 1969, Page 1

Work Stops On Dam Project

(N.Z.PA.-Reuter—Copyright) BANGKOK, August 20. Foreign technicians—mostly Japanese—have abandoned work on a dam project in Laos partly paid for by Australia and New Zealand because Communist forces now control the area about two miles from the project site.

The Thai Prime Minister (Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn) said the Communists had announced that they opposed the construction of the dam. They had said they would destroy it when it was completed. Marshal Thanom gave no further details. The cost of the Nam Ngum dam, on which work began in February, 1967, is estimated to be $21.7m. Half the cost is being provided by the United States and the rest by Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands. The Japanese Nippon Koei Company, Ltd, is supervising the construction as consulting engineer. At the foot of the dam would be a power-station, which would transmit power

to Vientiane and to the nearby Thai towns of Nong Kliai and Udon.

The dam project, part of the Mekong development project organised by the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, is about 34 miles north of the Laotian administrative capital, Vientiane. It comprises a 470-yard concrete gravity dam, 75 yards above the bed of the Mekong River. Marshal Thanom also reported that Communist forces in Laos had captured Xieng Dat, a strategic town west of the Plain of Jars. He told reporters the Thai Government was worried over the situation created by the fall of Xieng Dat after the recent Communist occupation of Muong Soui, about 100 miles north of Vientiane. Xieng Dat is about 72.5 miles south-west of Muong Soui.