Radio Free Asia

Laos’ Boten Specific Economic Zone (SEZ) is enjoying strong interest from Chinese investors as the Lao-China railway nears completion, but local villagers are fearful of the rapid change. They say that the development will be good for the Chinese, but not for the Laotians who ...

The Lao government’s economic policies have worsened the living conditions of the nation’s poor and marginalized populations, while widening the gap between the haves and have-nots, a United Nations rights expert said Thursday, at the end of an 11-day official visit to the country.In a ...

A facility for the homeless, mentally ill and drug addicts in the Lao capital Vientiane is facing budget shortfalls and has resorted to fundraising in order to continue operations.The Somsanga Support Center in Vientiane’s Sayettha district urgently needs funding to continue to feed its 230 ...

Laos’ Ministry of Public Works and Transport has informed state inspectors at their annual meeting that its investigation unit found that hundreds of its employees engaged in corruption in 2018.Of the 1,002 cases that were uncovered, about 850 workers were disciplined and 55 were prosecuted ...

An estimated 125 families from seven villages in Vienthong district of central Laos’ Bolikhamxay province, who would be displaced after construction of a new dam are refusing to accept compensation from the developer, saying what they have been offered is not enough.Construction on the Nam ...

Laos’ deputy prime minister has identified poor soil analysis for a fatal hydropower dam collapse, often described as the country’s worst flooding in decades.At a meeting last week on environmental policy, Deputy Prime Minister Bounthong Chitmany, who also heads the investigative committee tasked with finding ...

Authorities have ordered the closure of three Chinese clinics this month in the northern Laotian province of Luang Namtha after issues such as unsanitary conditions and unqualified doctors have led to multiple patient deaths, RFA’s Lao Service has learned.The three clinics, Hong Sing clinic in ...

Laos has made impressive progress in reducing poverty, but still has a long way to go, as one quarter of the population still lives below the poverty line, according to a U.N. official visiting the Southeast Asian country this month.During an interview with RFA’s Lao ...

Three Lao workers trapped last week by a landslide while digging a passage to divert creek water to a nearby dam were found dead this week, with a fourth worker badly hurt, sources in the country say.The three men killed in the accident, which occurred ...

Concessions of land made by the government of Laos to Chinese banana farms are leaving villagers in one northern district without enough land of their own to feed their families, sources in the communist Southeast Asian country say.In the Beng district of Oudomxay province in ...