Africa-Press – Lesotho. IT took the swift intervention of former Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili to quell a dispute over compensation between villagers in Tsoelike and a Chinese-owned construction company.
The villagers were demanding compensation over the loss of their fields which were taken to pave way for a new road being built by Qingjing Groups (CNQC).
For over a year, there was a stalemate with the two sides brawling over the quantity and nature of the compensation. Mosisili told thepost that the dispute had been resolved adding “there is no fight between the people and the company”.
“It’s just that the people are impatient but truly speaking the company is paying,” he said. Mosisili said the company had begun paying the villagers last week and “it is paying in batches”.
The people, together with their local government councillor, Lephallo Phooko, had asked Mosisili to intervene in their dispute with the CNQC over the issue of compensation.
Mosisili is the MP for Tsoelike constituency. The company came to an agreement with the Tsoelike community five years ago to compensate the villagers after it took some of their fields to build the new road.
CNQC is building a 91-kilometre road at a cost of M1.7 billion through a loan from Exim Bank of China. The road will connect Ha-Mpiti and Sehlaba-Thebe villages in the mountainous, hard to reach, Qacha’s Nek region.
Owners of the fields in Tsoelike told this newspaper that they had been waiting for the company to fulfil its promise of compensating them. They said the company had not provided any explanation for the delay in processing their payment.
One of them, ’Manthethi Qekoane, said they signed papers for compensation last year in April and they were promised that the money would be available at that time.
“We opened bank accounts which were never used and the banks have already closed the accounts,” Qekoane said.
Qekoane said they tried several times to talk to the company but it kept on promising them payment without fulfilling its promise. “Our councillor did a lot to help the community on this issue but to no avail,” she said.
“We ended up talking to our MP, Ntate Pakalitha Mosisili, who also did a lot to help and he communicated with them through telephone in our presence and they told him they were not around at that time,” she said.
“They told him that they would work on that issue.
” Mosisili said the villagers will be paid in batches, ending a dispute that had threatened to scupper the construction of the new road.
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