Over 800 villagers in Ye township were forced to work for three days repairing a road damaged by rain.
 
On June 20, villagers were ordered by the Kaw-Zar Town Peace and Development Council (TPDC) Chairman, Kyaw Moe, to repair the main road on which a crater had formed after heavy downpour.
 
“The TPDC forced us to repair the road, and if anyone had refused they would have been punished. So nobody dared refuse,” said a resident from Kaw-Zar town.
 
The residents had to repair the road, which is about 1.5 miles long by working in rotational shifts, where one town quarter would work each day. There are over 800 households and two quarters in Kaw-Zaw Sub Township. The work system makes it mandatory that one person from each family works as a labourer for the road repair each day. The residents had to make repairs to the main road by filling in the crater with soil. The residents worked for three days, before the job was completed today.
 
Whenever the TPDC requires labour, they force residents to work where they want on a wide range of projects, from bridge repairs, to road repair, to cleaning bushes in the LIB No. 31 battalion. Labourers are not paid anything, according to a resident of Kaw-Zar town.
 
“We just meet their (SPDC) demands, and we have no time to work on our own jobs,” said a woman resident of Kaw-Zar town.
 
Whenever residents are forced to work, they have to bring their own food. The TPDC does not provide support for the residents who are forced to perform manual labuor. This has been the case since 2003 when the SPDC set up a battalion in Kaw-Zar Township. The SPDC forced residents from Kaw-Zaw to work as unpaid manual labour at that time, to build the LIB No. 31 battalion.
 
Kaw-Zar Sub Township, which is in southern Ye Township, has the most instances of human rights violation in Mon state, according to Nai Aue Mon, coordinator of Human Rights Documentation and Dissemination Project (HRDDP).