Making fortunes by forcibly taking

[suriya@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Making fortunes by forcibly taking over farms and arable lands in Ye Township.

YOMA THREE NEWS AGENCY

Responsible personnel of W.L.O.R.C of Asin Village in Ye Township have forcibly taken over farms and arable lands from the local farmers. These farms and lands are on the Zee-Byu-Thaung car road and amount to over 20 acres. The first time during the Rice producing season in 1996, over 10 acres of land were forcibly taken over without any payment for the loss to the farmers. The land thus taken over were then divided into 40ft x 60ft housing plots. The people whose land were thus taken were given one 40ft x 60ft plot to live on. But those plots were not given near the car roads or main roads from where they  were evicted. They were forced to accept the  W.L.O.R.C?s method of distribution of the plots, i.e. by lottery system. The responsible personnel of the W.L.O.R.C divided the land at the rate of 6 plots per acre, thus over 60 plots for 10 acres. The people from the W.L.O.R.C took at least  2 plots for each person and those  were near the car road  or main roads. These plots of l
and which the W.L.O.R.C took for themselves were not included in the lottery. So the former owners and the other people who wanted to buy were not able to get the plots situated in good places, and they had to pay K.5000/- for a plot. Though the former owners of these land disagreed with the W.L.OR.C none dared to speak up lest the plot that they got would be taken away. 

The second time (during the rice-producing season of May 1997) the W.L.O.R.C, knowing the people were disgruntled with them, used a new method of taking over land and farms. They asked the owners to furnish them a list of farms and land they owned. These they divided into 40 ft. x 60 ft. plots and allowed the owners to sell those plots themselves .

Those plots were to be sold at K. 30000/- per plot and from that K. 30000/- the W.L.O.R.C. took K. 5000/- for themselves. Thus, the owners got only K. 25000/- for a plot of land they sold. The actual prevailing price for a 40 ft. x 60 ft. plot of land in Asin Village was over K. 100,000 /- if the owners  were given the right to sell freely . Taking this into consideration the loss incurred by the owners was very substantial. This time too, Ba Gyi Yone and other farmers lost 10 acres of their best lands.

Apart from that, the W.L.O.R.C. sold away a piece of land near the Asin Village school. That piece of land was boggy and part of it had owners. That piece of land was sold for K. 3000/-but nothing was paid to the owners.

The greatest loss for the farmers was that they were not able to do their hereditary work of farming, thus having to face acute shortage of rice, which is the basic necessity of the whole family. The sons and daughters of the village are now leaving their village to illegally enter Thailand to find jobs.

Beside that, due to the corrupt habit of the Agricultural Officers, only one Pyi (8 Condensed Milk tinful) of fertilizer are sold for an acre of paddy-producing field, and also due to the shortage of skilled workers to sow, transplant and reap the paddy fields, and because of the high rate of K. 500/- per day, per worker, the farmers are having a very bad time coping with the economic disaster which will surely come along.

The farmers are really afraid, it is known.