With a literacy rate of 3 per cent, access to education for half a million Wa living in the isolated hills of Eastern Shan State is being further hampered
by poverty that has doubled with the rigorously enforced 2005 poppy ban by Wa authorities, according to a report by the Chiangmai-based Teacher Training Center for Burmese Teachers (TTBT).

The TTBT, together with an American mission, is providing support to a Wa primary school in Yinpang, north of Panghsang. The school with 60 students also receives rice ration of 10 kilograms per month for each student, seven months a year, from the UN World Food Program (WFP). "It therefore has to buy rice to feed the children when the ration runs out," the report says.

Dr Thein Lwin (56), head of the TTBT, who has visited the township three times since 2004, said the school is managed by the local administration. "Due to political instability, the Wa leadership is not paying adequate attention to education," reads one of his reports. "Because of war, there is a large population of widows and orphans, with infant mortality estimated at 50 per cent."

The Wa, from 1950 to 1996, had fought successively in support of the Kuomintang (KMT), Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and Burma Army against the Burma Army and later the Mong Tai Army of Khun Sa.

With more funds from donors, the TTBT has plans to expand its operations to other areas, he said. Besides Yinpang, it is also supporting a primary school in the Palaung area, northern Shan State.

According to a report by Washington-based East-West Center, quoting Wa figures, the Wa leadership had set up five middle schools and 240 primary schools by the year 2000. "Not all new school buildings have teachers, and schools often have to be maintained by the villagers," the report says.

"Education beyond middle school is non-existent. This is clearly a direct cause of the weak leadership."

Yingpang, meaning the 'village of Ta Hpawng,' the name of a Wa prince, is also known as Ving Ngun (Wiang Ngeun). One of Ta Hpawng's sons was Maha Hsang, leader of the Wa National Army (UWSA) who died in 2007.