Recent experience with involuntary resettlement - Indonesia - Kedung Ombo
Monica Fong | Lokshin, Michael
The resettlement component of the Kedung Ombo project has been among the most controversial of big dam projects and the only one with documented evidence of military intervention and coercion of households to move out from the reservoir area. The villages and district headquarters in Kemusu formed the core of the controversy that was to arise over compensation rates for displacees, suitable substitute sites, refusal to evacuate even as the waters were rising, and ultimately, the insistence to stay put and cultivate the greenbelt as well as the fertile old floodplain as it reemerged every year in the dry season when water was released for irrigation (the drawdown area). In addition, supervision of resettlement aspects came late, after the situation had deteriorated to the point where only salvage operations were possible. The Bank's senior sociologist's warnings were ignored at appraisal, although they were to be proven accurate within two years. It should not have been left to an NGO or a supervision mission on another assignment to reveal that the largest group of Kedung Ombo transmigrants was in deep trouble. Self-settled and government-village families that have improved their income base have had to do so by diversifying out of agriculture. The heads of households stay on the new farms, but the older sons and daughters get jobs outside. This is a common phenomenon on Java, and in no way attributable to farsighted planning by resettlement officials.
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