Striking Lesotho Dam Workers Killed by Police - NGOs Urge World Bank to Take Action
Five workers were shot dead and some 30 injured when police evicted striking workers from a Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) construction camp in Lesotho on September 14. For at least a week after the killings, up to 1,000 workers remained in a nearby Catholic church where they had sought refuge after the bloody encounter.
The World Bank has loaned $110 million for the Katse Dam, the
first to be built in the multi–dam water transfer scheme, and
is currently considering making loans for a second,
Mohale Dam.
It also lent $8 million in concessionary loans for project design.
The project's water is destined for South Africa, which is funding
the bulk of the multi–billion–dollar project.
Lori Pottinger, Southern Africa Campaigns Coordinator for International
Rivers Network, says:
- "Local and international NGOs are asking the World Bank to use its good offices to intervene at the highest levels of government, to ensure that an impartial, independent investigation is conducted and that the perpetrators of this tragedy are brought to justice."
According to a press statement by the Lesotho Council of NGOs,
which talked with workers soon after the confrontation, "police
charged upon [workers] while they were in peaceful occupation
and
were not destroying any property. [Police] threw a great quantity
of tear gas and as the workers started fleeing, they started shooting
at them. They shot and injured or killed some of them even after
the workers had escaped the camp and were in a nearby donga
[gully] The police were also shooting at ambulances that were
coming to the assistance of injured people. One ambulance driver
with
injured people in the vehicle was even arrested and shot."
The slain Basotho (native to Lesotho) workers were all employed
by a project consortium that includes five contractors: LTA Ltd.
(South Africa), Spie Batignolles (France), Balfour Beatty Ltd.
(UK), Campenon Bernard (France), and Ed Züblin AG (Germany).
All were working on a hydropower project linked to Katse Dam.
The
contractors requested the police to evict the workers from
the camp shortly after firing 2,300 workers for "illegally
striking."
The South African Business Day reports that
two Lesotho
opposition parties "have called on President Mandela, the
World Bank, EU and Lesotho governments to ensure the supension
of officials implicated in striking workers' deaths."
The US$8 billion scheme––huge by international construction project
standards––threatens to overwhelm tiny Lesotho, where the average
yearly income is US$440 and the government has no experience
managing
large construction projects.
James Lamont wrote in the South African newspaper supplement Business
Report (September 20), "Many questions are drifting down
from the
Lesotho Highlands, foremost of which is whether the Lesotho
government has the capacity to administer a project of this size."
This is the latest in a series of labor disputes that date
back
to May of this year. The September strike was called for a number
of reasons, including lower pay for Basotho workers compared to
those from other countries; police harassment of workers, and
the
contractors' dismantling of negotiating structures set up
with the local construction workers' union, the Construction and
Allied Workers Union of Lesotho.
The LHWP has fallen under increased
public scrutiny recently.
An international workshop on the project, held in Johannesburg
last month, revealed ongoing social issues arising from the project.
Project authorities have also been battling
increasingly bad press
over problems with compensation and resettlement issues. On Sept.
2, the South African newspaper supplement Business Report
quoted the World Bank's task manager for the
project, John Roome,
as saying, "For us to proceed with the next phase, environmental
and social elements of [Katse Dam] have to be satisfactorily met."