Buthidaung, Arakan State: The name of the game is money and the Township Peace and Development Council (TPDC) of Buthidaung Township is into a lucrative business of selling rubber and physic nut sapling to villagers in Buthidaung since May 2008, said a local trader requesting not to be named.
TPDC officials have been selling rubber and physic nut saplings to villagers since May at the rate of Kyat 75 and 50 respectively.
Villagers have to buy rubber saplings according to the size of the land while villagers have to buy 50 saplings of physic nut per family.
So the villagers have to by 50 physic nut saplings per family at the rate of Kyat 50 per sapling and buy 25 rubber saplings for every 0.40 acres. If a farmer has 10 acres of land, he has to buy 250 rubber saplings at a price of Kyat 6,250. Besides, the villagers have to buy physic nut at Kyat 2,500.
The TPDC staff members do not sell rubber saplings to villagers directly but they take the money from the villagers in keeping with their quota which is tantamount to a kind of fraud.
On any given day, the TPDC staff members accompanied by members of the VPDC select about three to four acres of land in a mountain area and grow rubber saplings with forced labor from villagers. Villagers have to pay for fencing the saplings to protect it from cattle. The officials are not bothered whether the rubber saplings grow. The idea is to extort money from villagers, said a local elder on condition of anonymity.
Similarly, officials order the villagers to grow physic nut saplings in their compound. If a sapling dies the grower is fined Kyat 300 per plant. Though the authorities have issued stern orders some villagers threw away the saplings. These saplings grow well on land where water flows, but it dies where water is blocked.
The concerned authorities take no heed, whether the physic not saplings are succeeded or not. Their aim is only to get money from villagers. They also don't try to get seeds from these projects. So, it is clear that these are the lucrative business for them. The authorities concerned have been taking initiative last three years, but they don't collect any seed from the villagers, said a village elder.
