Construction workers will pour 5.4 million cubic meters of cement this year as work on the mammoth Three Gorges dam project accelerates, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday. Work on the 50.09 billion yuan ($1=CNY8.2669) dam on the Yangtze River, the world’s largest hydroelectric power project, was on schedule, with workers meeting a quota of pouring 4.48 million cubic meters in 1999, the report said. Meanwhile, an opponent to the project, the Toronto-based research group Probe International, reported that the government had decided to resettle people living in the area to be submerged by the reservoir created by the dam to areas further away than originally planned. The initial resettlement policy of moving farmers to higher ground nearby or providing them with factory jobs in the area was changed following a visit to the area by Premier Zhu Rongji, who decided the plan was not feasible. Earlier, the group reported that resettlement had virtually halted following Zhu’s visit. "Unused land in the area simply doesn’t exist and many of the area’s industrial enterprises need to be shut down because they are outdated, bankrupt and incapable of creating new jobs for the displaced people," the report said. Almost two million people will be displaced by the dam. Some 550,000 must be moved before 2003, when the waters of the Yangtze River are scheduled to begin rising and the dam’s first 14 turbines begin operation. The rest have to move by 2009 when the project’s 600-kilometer-long reservoir is filled. The report by Probe International said that the number of people already moved was fewer than 100,000, far below the 178,000 state-run media have reported successfully resettled. Environmental and human rights activists have opposed the dam, saying its size and cost are wasteful and its impact on human lives and the Yangtze River valley’s rich environment and cultural relics too devastating.