In Hlaing Tharyar, illegal residents face tough decisions

[DagonKhan]

In Hlaing Tharyar, illegal residents face tough decisions

The concrete road beside the huge factory compound is silent on this early Monday morning, empty save for a few pedestrians and bicycles.

A woman sits in a house built illegally on government land on the outskirts of Yangon. (Kaung Htet/The Myanmar Times)

Beside the road are the small bamboo huts that are so ubiquitous in Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar township. In one of the huts, Ma Yi Yi Myint, 31, prepares fruit to sell at bus stops in the township. Her tiny home is barely large enough for three people to stay at one time.

“I couldn’t sleep for a week when I got that piece of paper,” she said, her gaze lowered as she peels the fruit.

The piece of paper is an eviction notice dated August 8.

“I got a second notice on September 8. And the authorities also told us to come to a meeting,” she said.

The September 9 meeting was arranged by Hlaing Tharyar township administrators, township lawyers, police and Yangon City Development Committee officials to explain the laws and punishment that squatters who refuse to abide by eviction notices can expect to face.

Officials plan to evict more than 300 homes build on YCDC land and another 600 households on Ministry of Construction land in Hlaing Tharyar, a sprawling township of several hundred thousand people on Yangon’s western fringe.

The September 9 meeting was arranged by Hlaing Tharyar township administrators, township lawyers, police and Yangon City Development Committee officials to explain the laws and punishment that squatters who refuse to abide by eviction notices can expect to face. Officials plan to evict more than 300 homes built on YCDC land and another 600 households on Ministry of Construction land in Hlaing Tharyar, a sprawling township of several hundred thousand people on Yangon’s western fringe.

Ma Yi Yi Myint was one of hundreds of glum-faced residents who sat through the meeting, leaving despondent and worried about their future. She and her husband, also 31, and their daughter left their hometown of Kyaiklat in Ayeyarwady Region just six months ago. “If you’re in a rural area it is even more difficult to make money … so we came to Yangon. But when we got here, we found that rents are so high, even for a small room. We couldn’t afford anything so we built this hut beside the road. Many other people were already doing it so we didn’t think we were breaking any laws,” she said. She makes anywhere from K3000 to K5000 a day selling fruit to bus passengers, while her husband can make K3000 a day as a labourer. “I can only get that much if I start working very early in the morning. I have to walk along the road, back and forth, all day,” she said. “And even if we get K7000 or K8000 a day, it is not really enough to cover our expenses.”

Daw Myint Myint Than, a noodle salad vendor in her 50s, runs her business from a hut made out of tarpaulins. Her home-cum-shop consists of a bench, a few items on the ground and a small table.

It is virtually all she owns but with the K3000 or K4000 profit she makes a day she manages to send her two children to middle school. “The room I rent is not big enough for a family but I can’t afford anything bigger. I let my children stay in there because they are students and they need a space to study well and I stay outside,” she said. She pays K15,000 a month for the room, which is in one of the township’s many slum areas. It is virtually the cheapest room available – but she too faces eviction now. “I have to move my shop but I have no idea what to do,” Daw Myint Myint Than said.

These stories are all too familiar to township administrator U Htein Soe, who addressed the September 9 meeting. He said migration, high rent and low wages have encouraged many people to build homes illegally on state or privately owned land. “I think there would be about 50,000 squatters in Hlaing Tharyar township,” he said. “There are more and more after Nargis [in May 2008] because many people moved here from Ayeyarwady Region after the cyclone.” While agreeing that squatters have few other housing options, U Htein Soe said he is concerned about safety aspects of illegal communities, such as residents cooking beside gas pipelines, and the impact on property owners. He said some squatters target privately owned land that is not being used and try to extort money from the owners.

“We plan to give them five eviction notices. Those who do not move from the area after five warnings will face legal action,” he said. At the September 9 meeting, the squatters had asked to be allowed to stay until after the end of the school year in February. Some asked to be resettled elsewhere. “We won’t ignore their difficulties. We will tell higher-level officials about them and we will do what we can,” U Htein Soe said.

Township lawyer Daw Thanda Aung said she explained the law to the squatters at the meeting. “Though we feel sorry for them, we are civil servants and we have to do our job. But we are afraid of getting into an argument with them,” she said.

She has some justification for being afraid: In February, squatters chased off YCDC workers with bamboo sticks when they tried to evict them from a disused Ministry of Construction site in Hlaing Tharyar.

Whether officials are likely to face a similar confrontation with the 900 households slated for eviction is unclear. For now, residents are just waiting for the fifth eviction notice.

“We haven’t done anything wrong except live here illegally. But we do this because we are too poor to rent a room for a family,” said U Aung Zaw, a squatter who came to the September 9 meeting. “I have no plan to move because we have nowhere to go. My family and I will live here until the officials come to kick us out.

There's the poor and then there's the squatters. This article fails to distinguish between the two.

What it doesn't mention is where this land is that the squatters are squatting on. Basically it's the roadside right outside a factory/business. Why? Because the factory owners pay them money not to squat there, it's a business plain and simple. The current rate is US$300-400 to move them on. You then need to spend a few hundred dollars fencing it off. Why? Because the local authorities (who own the land) don't want them there and order you to do it.

Oh yeah, and the local authorities take their cut too.....

[Dr Robert]

Heart breaking story about the cycle of corruption and greed and poverty. It is good that you have drawn attention to the issue. It begs the question as to what sort of solution the journalist proposes in such intransigence? Answer-abolutely nothing-perhaps it is exactly the same sort of exploitation by the newspaper reporting the story to sell advertising space?

[DagonKhan]

Heart breaking story about the cycle of corruption and greed and poverty. It is good that you have drawn attention to the issue. It begs the question as to what sort of solution the journalist proposes in such intransigence? Answer-abolutely nothing-perhaps it is exactly the same sort of exploitation by the newspaper reporting the story to sell advertising space?

There are solutions, plenty of them, but no one makes money from them, they only cost money.

The article suggests that these people came after Nargis. That's complete and utter rubbish, this has all happened in the last couple of years. It's typical though as they seek to evoke sympathy and paint them as something they are not.

Plenty of these squatters have made enough money to buy land which they now rent to the 'poor', yet they continue to squat as it's good business. These 'poor' are the ones who get up each day and go to work in the local factories, they're the ones who pay anywhere from US$20-30 to rent a room. In the dog eat dog world that the government has created, it's the genuine poor who get screwed, that rackateers (squatters) get sympathy, it disgusts me.

All the 'low cost' housing was bought up by officials connected to the government. You want to live there? You need to buy it from them or rent it from them. Right now there are stories about the 'low cost' housing in North Dagon (completely different area in case you're not aware), but no one reports the truth. The truth is simple, only YCDC employees, Government employees and soldiers get their applications processed, everybody elses goes into the wastepaper basket. But you wait, we'll all be reading about how it was oversubscribed and how successful the Government is in solving the problem. They did it 10 years ago at Hlaing Tharyar, they've been doing ever since and will no doubt continue to do it.