After months without regular electricity, the residents of many villages in Mon State and Karen State report that they have, without any prior warning from the Burmese government, enjoyed a constant supply of power for the past month.
“Now the electricity comes regularly, but we don’t know why? The electricity has come before but never for a long time, just for a minute. Now the electricity comes for a long time (sometimes for the whole day, sometimes it is cut off for 5 minutes or something like that), and regularly,” said a villager who lives in Hneepadaw village in Mudon Township.
IMNA’s story from May 11th of this year described the severity the power outages in Southern Burma. Near the close of 2008, villages in the Mudon Township area only had electricity for 3 days a month, and on those days electricity only ran for a two-hour period. University student protests in Moulmein this March over a lack of electricity during spring exams resulted in a 2-month block of fairly steady electricity in the city area, but by the middle of May, the Burmese government once again plunged the city into darkness, along with the rest of Mon State. The renewal of steady electricity without warning in many areas of Mon and Karen States this month has thus come as an extremely pleasant surprise.
According to a Mon Mudon Township resident, “We don’t know the reason why the electricity is coming, sometime the electricity is still cut off, but not for a long time. The electricity has come regularly for the last month, [also] during this month we can see that the electricity is coming regularly.”
IMNA’s May 11th report documented how faulty electricity in Southern Burma presents a particular problem to Burmese professionals who run VCD, computer, or other electronics businesses; such individuals must purchase personal generators to get the electricity needed to run their businesses and sell their wares.
Sources from Mudon Township informed IMNA that they suspect the sudden “power surge” is a political strategy of the Burmese government in preparation for the 2010 elections. These sources feel that the Burmese military government is providing villages with electricity as a bribe to urge villagers to organize in its favor before the elections.
“The power came regularly in Hpa-an last month, but before September the electricity didn’t come. Not just in the Town, also in the villages it came regularly [last month], before last month we never saw the electricity come like this,” a Karen resident from Hpa-an Town said.
