Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Sometime after the Water Festival holidays, the promised road improvement projects made during last year’s election campaign by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) will resume, according to party leaders.
The construction projects were halted in the post-election period so members could work on forming the new government, said Tha Win, a USDP member of Parliament representing Yankin Township. He said that some projects in the 13 townships around Rangoon were half-finished.
‘The construction in the Eastern District is incomplete. We will work on all of those roads’, he said.
The unfinished road work included areas in Thaketa, Botahtaung, Dawpone, Pazuntaung, Thingangyun, South Okkalapa, North Okkalapa, North Dagon, South Dagon, East Dagon, Dagonseikkan, Hlaingthaya, and Shwepyitha townships.
During the political campaign, the USDP courted voters with promises to build new roads, bridges and hospitals and other public work projects.
A resident in Ward No. 7 in South Okkalapa Township told Mizzima: ‘In our ward, they paved a road before the election but it has remained half-finished. After they won, they halted the project. We can’t decide whether we should continue to pave the road or not. We don’t know whether they will continue the project’.
An editor of a local weekly journal said on the condition of anonymity, ‘The party hardly worked on those projects in the large townships. They were heavily biased in favour of the suburban areas where the grassroots voters live’.
A resident in Ward No. 18 in the South Dagon Township told Mizzima that during the campaign the party said that if people wanted it to continue its work, they must become USDP members.
In the pre-election period, Minister of Finance and Revenues Hla Tun, a candidate in the Kyaukpadaung Township constituency in Mandalay Region, granted residents low-interest loans, but after the election, he has not granted any more loans, according to residents.
In some areas, observers said the USDP misused local funds in municipal departments, spending the money to build new roads.
The Union Solidarity and Development Association, the progenitor of the USDP, was formed by the former military junta in 1993 as a social organisation. Before the recent election, it was transformed into the USDP to serve as the junta-backed political party.
In the election, the USDP won 882 parliamentary seats or 76.5 percent out of the total of 1,154 seats in three legislatures.
