Jim D - No worries, glad you liked the pics.
td25c - the pics I'm posting here was a private project. A London based company had taken a 99 year lease on 6,000+ acres to grow orchard crops to produce bio-diesel. Before the client went belly up for violating investment laws, we'd cleared around 2,500 acres and planted close on 1,000 acres of trees.
The land was leased through a co-operative. The entire community had a stake in the land and depending on several factors, they would all receive a share of the annual lease price which was paid to their leaders. It was hardly plain sailing though. All the settlements on the land were supposed to relocate. The clients offered an additional payment for them to build new 'huts' elsewhere, offered a tractor and trailer to help move their belongings and also offered to clear and plough the new land where they were supposed to go. They took the money for their new huts and pretty much remained in situ. One of our local collaborators wanted to get the army in to evict them, but we refused to look at that option as it could have created bad press.
Another nuisance was the distribution of money. The tribal leaders were the beneficiaries of the lease payments and had the job of distributing it. I'm fairly certain a large chunk went in their back pockets as numerous villagers complained of getting no money or only part of it. I think they had put the blame on 'the westerners' saying we hand't paid the full amount.
Theft was also another issue. If you've got it, they'll steal it. Once over a 6 week period, we had around 4,000 litres of diesel go missing. As the local police had no vehicles, we had to transport around 80 workers to the local station using tractors and trailers. Sadly, I don't have pics of the occasion. Even our enthusiastic security force couldn't keep a lid on everything.
