A secretary of the Union Solidarity Development Association's organizing department in Sittwe misappropriated public funds contributed by local residents to repair a bridge in Sittwe Township, said a local community leader on condition of anonymity.

"The fund was misappropriated by U Kyaw Kyaw Naing, who is secretary of the USDA organizing department, but we have not been able to complain about the incident to anyone in our township because he is a USDA member," he said.

Each family from two Aung Mingala Villages, upper and lower, and two Muslim villages contributed 1,000 kyat in the last two months to repair a bridge that connects the villages with the government high school number six north of Sittwe.  There are over 300 households in the villages.

"The bridge is very important for our children to go to school, so we contributed 1,000 kyat from each family to repair it and we transferred the funds to U Kyaw Kyaw Naing after all of the donations were collected," he said.

U Kyaw Kyaw Naing is not only a USDA official, but also a government official in Sittwe Port and a resident of Aung Mingala Village.

"He is USDA and a government official in our village. So we trusted him, but he took the funds for the bridge," the community
leader said.

According to a local village source, some village leaders went to Kyaw Kyaw Naing's house last week to request that he repair the bridge with the villagers' contribution, but he refused and threatened to punish the villagers if the matter was ever mentioned again.

"He was angry when we discussed the matter. He told us to go anywhere to complain because he didn't care. He also told us that he could neither repair the bridge, nor could he return the money to us," he said.

However, villagers are afraid to complain to any authorized person in the area because U Kyaw Kyaw Naing is not only a USDA official, but a close associate of army officials in the area.