Ethnic refugees fleeing fighting in Kachin State who have been resettled in Ngwe Pyaw Standard Village near Myitkyinar Township, a government built village constructed especially for refugees, are having difficulties surviving.
The village was built as part of the government resettlement program for war refugees. The population is a mixture of different ethnicities including Kachin, Shan, Lisu, Burman and Rawan according to U Aung Swe the village headman.
Though the French NGO Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) is supplying food such as rice, cooking oil, beans and salt to the villagers, but they have no opportunities to make money and their long-term survival seems very uncertain.
Nan Tin Moe Khaing, a Shan woman from village said: “Currently, we cannot grow anything. They [ACTED] gave us some seeds to grow as a test, but we were unsuccessful due to the bad quality of the topsoil.”
Her husband said they could get work clearing weeds from around rubber trees in rubber plantations on the In-Khaing-Bum mountain near the village. They are paid 100 Kyat for each tree they weed and they rely on this money. Unfortunately there are only two or three days work a month doing this work, meaning that most of the time they have no work.
Currently the couple is trying to establish a business where they collect amber, polish it and then try to sell it, but at present the business is not viable and they are having difficulties in supplying the essentials for their daughter’s kindergarten education.
Previously they paid their daughter’s school 6,000 kyats a month to feed her, but now they cannot afford that and can only afford to give her boiled rice to eat at school.
The unmade road to Myitkyinar is in a very bad condition because it was built by hand without machinery and no vehicles use the road, which makes it very difficult for the villagers to go and work in Mytkyina. Though the refugees have been given homes they also need to have regular work said Aung Swe.
Nan Tin Moe Khaing said: “We want farmland that can support crops and jobs.”
Daw Bauk Jar the State Minister for the Social Department said that by the end of the year they will seal the road to Ngwe Pyaw.
Currently, in Ngwe Pyaw 600 people occupy 115 out of 283 houses in the village.
Translated by Aung Myat Soe and written up in English by Mark Inkey for BNI.
