Ngaba Tibetan nomads moved into fixed settlements

(TibetanReview.net, Nov28, 2009)  As part of its plans to settled nomads across the Tibetan Plateau is fixed settlements, China began in Mid-Feb ’09 an 18 billion yuan project to house 100,000 households (involving 480,000 herdsmen) in the Tibetan-inhabited areas of Sichuan Province in four years, reported the official Xinhuanet news service Nov 27.

As of the end of Oct’09, the province had completed 93 of a planned 256 settlements in Ngawa (also written as Ngaba, Chinese: Aba), and Garze (Tibetan: Karze) Tibetan prefectures in the south and Liangshan Yi prefecture further south. The report said welfare houses for 16,776 households had been built in Ngawa and Garze, accommodating 81,918 people.

The report, sourced from Sichuan Daily, showed a picture of “herdsmen busy building houses in Jiangba Village, Kangding (Tibetan: Dartsedo) County, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, western Sichuan”. Obviously, the settlement houses don’t come free for the settlers.