Student protests over electricity are meeting mixed results in Mon State, with the University quarter in Moulmein receiving power while the rest of Mon State remains largely in the dark.

Over the last two weeks following the student protests, residents of the Myaing-tha-yar ward report that they have been receiving steady supplies of electricity. Myaing-tha-yar ward is the primary area where Moulmein University students reside.

At least one hundred university and 10th grade students protested on the night of March 6th, throwing stones and shouting demands for electricity at government offices. The events were prompted by a prolonged stretch in which Mon State’s capital city had been without power, complicating students’ efforts to study for their annual exams.

“Since the students’ protest, the electricity supply around the University comes very often. When it cuts off, it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes to come back,” a Moulmein University student from Myaing-tha-yar ward told IMNA. “But other wards do not get electricity as much as us.”

Electricity strong enough to cook or even operate a water pump is available all day long, explained the student, though it will often briefly cut out from 4 to 7 pm. Electricity supplies were too weak to complete such tasks even before the prolonged outage that prompted the protests, with students reporting that they had to wait until midnight or later to operate electric pumps and draw water for bathing.

A woman who operates a hostel for university students agreed, and said that her electricity has been strong since the protests, with the exception of small interruptions in the evening.

How long the increased electricity supply will flow remains to be seen; the exams that prompted the protests are half over. Students in grade 10 will finish exams tomorrow, while the last university exams will be held next week.

Though hostel owners were given until March 15th to purchase generators so students would have back-up electricity supplies, sources that spoke with IMNA say the authorities have made no follow-up checks.

“As we know about our Burma country, some hostel owners are afraid so they bought generators and some will not buy generators at all,” explained another hostel owner who spoke with IMNA. “For me, I will not buy a generator because now I can use electricity enough in my hostel. The ward headman told us they will check to see if people bought generators or not, but they still have not checked.” Other hostel owners who do not already own generators said they would also wait for checks before they made any purchases.

Residents throughout the rest of Mon State, meanwhile, say that they continue to be without consistent supplies of electricity.

With the exception of a VIP electricity line and a brief citywide burst of power on the Saturday following the protests, residents of Moulmein’s 23 other wards say that things have returned to their weak-and-inconsistent power normalcy.

“The authorities supply electricity to the VIP line regularly,” a doctor from Moulmein told IMNA. The VIP line serves government and military offices as well as individuals or businesses wealthy enough to purchase a connection. “However for the residents, we get 1 hour in a day and sometime we don’t see electricity for a week.

“Every day we have two times where we might be happy – when authorities supply electricity and water to us,” continued the doctor, who added that people can be heard clapping whenever electricity supplies appear.

Electricity supplies outside Moulmein are equally intermittent, say residents, and with the added complication that connecting to the grid must be carefully negotiated and paid for.

In July, for instance, six villages in Mudon Township had their electricity cut off because they had paid for electricity, but failed to pay for a formal inauguration ceremony attended by the commander of the Southeast Command, which controls the area. Then, a few months later, some of the villages were ordered to make another round of payments, continuing what for some had been a multi-year, 10 million kyat-plus saga.

In other villages, residents say that though they received nightly 2-hour blocks of power 2 months ago, they are currently without electricity.

“[The lack of electricity] creates problems for the grade 10 student exams,” explained a student’s mother. “Throughout their exam time, some can’t pay for generator power, so they have no power [to study]. I heard that Moulmen students protested to get electricity. Now I am little bit worried for my son. If he becomes involved in that case he may be arrested.”

Lack of government electricity has Mon State residents seeking power elsewhere. For those wealthy enough to pay hundreds of thousands of kyat, this means purchasing a generator.

“Without regular electricity, I cannot run my business,” a businessman who sells VCDs in Thanbyuzayat said. “So I have to rely on the generator. When [government] electricity comes, it is in the night when we are already asleep.”

For others, this means purchasing electricity from private companies. In Naung Gone village, Mudon Township, for instance, a private company has been supplying electricity for the last seven years. According to one resident who purchases the private electricity, buying enough power to turn on a small fluorescent light for two hours every night costs about 3,000 kyat per month.

In other places, more civic-minded projects have been filling the government’s power void. Groups of monks in Thaton, Chaung Zone and Ye Townships, for instance, have organized the purchase of equipment and provision of electricity at operating costs.

“Our village has electricity now, because of the efforts of the monk and monastery donors,” IMNA quoted a woman from Chaung Zone in February. “If we just hoped for electricity from the government, our village would never have electricity.”

The project in Lamine Sub-Township, Ye Township, however, provides a classic lesson in the basic importance of economies of scale. Though the power is sold to the public at only the cost of generator fuel, initial costs during the 2007 start-up ran close to 300,000 kyat per household.

In 2008, the government began provide relatively consistent power to Lamine, with initial connection costs discounted by 100,000 kyat. “When we got electricity from the monks, we had to spend about 0.3 million kayt,” a resident told IMNA. “For the government supply, it was only about 0.2 million kayt.”