Dawei (Tavoy) Deep Seaport Development Project

Ital Thai additional project plans

2012-02-29T07:26:00.001-08:00

Dawei initial environment assessment

2012-02-29T07:16:00.000-08:00

A case before the U.S. Supreme Court may deny victims abroad recourse against corporate-sanctioned abuse. – Ka Hsaw Wa

2012-02-29T06:14:00.001-08:00

Among the thousands of interviews I've conducted as a human rights investigator over the last 24 years, one of the most difficult was in 1996, outside a refugee camp along the Thai-Burma border. I was no stranger to suffering in my country. I had fled from Burma (also known as Myanmar) just a few years before, escaping the brutal military regime after being arrested and tortured. I had gone to the camp to investigate reports that villages were being uprooted and brutalized to make way for a natural gas pipeline built by U.S. oil giant Unocal and other multinational corporations. There, I met a young mother from my Karen ethnic group whose baby had recently been killed by Burmese troops providing security for the pipeline.

That was Jane Doe, as she would later be known. She would go on to help establish the legal principle that U.S. corporations can be held liable for complicity in severe human rights abuses abroad. Now, a case being argued before theU.S. Supreme Courton Tuesday may mean that future Jane Does will have no such recourse against corporations.

Jane Doe 1 was a poor farmer whose great misfortune was that she was living in the path of the project when Unocal — now owned by Chevron — and its French and Thai corporate partners began building the pipeline. Their other partner was the Burmese military regime, and the corporations contracted with its army, despite its abhorrent human rights record, to provide security for the project.

The soldiers forced thousands of villagers to provide slave labor for the project. One of those villagers was Jane Doe's husband. As Jane Doe told me in the camp, the military forced her husband at gunpoint to clear the jungle and carry heavy loads. When he escaped, the soldiers came looking for him. They found Jane Doe instead, nursing her baby near a cooking fire. She told them she didn't know where her husband was. The soldiers beat her into unconsciousness and kicked her and her baby into the fire. Jane Doe recovered from her injuries; her baby died.

I remember trying to comfort her and thinking: How is it possible that foreign companies can come into Burma, hire a rogue army, make billions of dollars and have no responsibility for what their business partners do? There have been positive changes in Burma recently, but at that time, justice was impossible; the courts served the military. But Unocal was a U.S. company, and I had met American lawyers who believed that U.S. corporations were not above human rights laws.

And so, in 1996, Jane Doe 1 became a lead plaintiff in Doe vs. Unocal, a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, where Unocal had its headquarters. The case was based on the U.S. Alien Tort Statute of 1789, which allows non-U.S. citizens to file lawsuits in the U.S. for violations of international law. Jane Doe's case was the first to apply that law to corporations accused of liability in human rights violations. In 2005, Unocal agreed to a settlement. The case has provided an underpinning for similar claims against corporations headquartered in the U.S. or doing business in the U.S., and thus it has helped victims of crimes against humanity gain some justice.

For example, in 2007 Yahoo agreed to compensate the families of two Chinese dissidents imprisoned after the Internet company provided their identifying information to the Chinese government, and in 2010 the military contractor Blackwater compensated the families of several Iraqi men allegedly killed by Blackwater guards.

But now, the use of the Alien Tort Statute in cases of alleged corporate liability in human rights cases has come under attack from big business. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Kiobel vs. Royal Dutch Petroleum. The plaintiffs are Nigerians who suffered abuse under a brutal military dictatorship in the mid-1990s; they sued Royal Dutch Petroleum, better known as Shell, over its alleged support of this violence. Shell is arguing that corporations are not responsible for human rights abuses under such circumstances; that individual employees who are complicit in torture, summary executions and other crimes against humanity can be held liable, but not corporations. An appeals court decided that international law, which is considered under the Alien Tort Statute, backed up that claim.

That decision misreads international law, which does not shield corporations from responsibility, and is a major setback for human rights cases based on Doe vs. Unocal. The justices will consider whether the U.S. will become a haven for companies that are allegedly complicit in the most heinous crimes or whether it will continue to provide a legal forum for accountability and justice.

The hardest part of my job is talking to the victims and survivors of human rights abuses. The only thing that I could offer to Jane Doe was hope — hope that the perpetrators, including the corporations that enable and profit from such crimes, would be punished so that future abuses could be deterred; hope that by suing, she could prevent other mothers from losing a child.

In 1996, we didn't know what the outcome of our case would be. One of my proudest moments was telling Jane Doe that the U.S. courts would hear her case; that a poor woman from Burma would have a fair shot against a powerful American oil company. She and I knew that our lawsuit against Unocal would not bring her baby back. But we also knew that enforcing the law against corporations would mean such abuses might be prevented in the future. Never again, we thought, would a company think it could get away with murder.

The hardest thing I'll ever have to do is tell her we were wrong.

MYANMAR: Humanitarian cost of economic development

2012-02-28T05:34:00.001-08:00

BANGKOK, 27 February 2012 (IRIN) - A development spree in Myanmar following recent political reforms may have hidden costs for rural dwellers, especially ethnic minorities, say analysts.

Speaking at a recent conference in Yangon on inclusive growth, former World Bank president and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz warned that Myanmar risked becoming "a rich country with poor people", as quoted in local media.

In 2011, foreign investment in mining, oil, gas and hydropower in Myanmar totalled US$20 billion, according to the government.

And while a $3.6 billion project to construct a dam on the Irrawaddy River for a hydropower plant was suspended due to protests stemming from environmental and social concerns, including the projected displacement of thousands of villagers from the northern state of Kachin, a deepwater port project is going ahead, despite similar criticisms.

Saw Frankie Abreu, a coordinator with the local NGO Another Development for Burma, believes the multi-billion dollar project in the southeastern city of Dawei in Tanintharyi Region may displace tens of thousands of villagers and boost undocumented migration to Thailand.

The Burmese government has defended the proposed port, whose construction began late 2011, as a boon to the local economy, but community activists say the gains are coming at too high a cost.

While the government is creating four new villages to house the displaced, Saw Frankie Abreu criticized the plan as insufficient.

"We have seen the houses they are building. They are building one house for each family, but it is for... just four or five people. But villagers have more children than that. And also most of the time they are extended families, but the government is counting this as one family. So where will the others go?" Saw Frankie Abreu asked.

The displacement will "severely" affect the livelihoods of the ethnic minorities living in these villages who are unable to adapt to the new locations, said Khin Ohmar, coordinator of the Burma Partnership, a network of NGOs based in northern Thailand.

"The Mon and Karen people are the majority in this area. They depend on the orchards and farming, like growing betel nuts, for their livelihood. Their livelihoods depend entirely on the land they live on," Khin Ohmar told IRIN.

One of the villages under construction for the displaced from Dawei is 60km north in Bawa village.

"Bawa is a fishing community," said Saw Frankie Abreu, "while the Dawei people are farmers. The land in Bawa is not suitable for farming, so people are now thinking of moving, or are already moving to other places."

A number are trying neighbouring Thailand, said Khin Ohmar.

Win Kay Thi, a Burmese migrant worker from Dawei living in the southern Phang Nga Province of Thailand, told IRIN she would bring her mother and sister, who live in Dawei, to join her.

"I have settled in Thailand as a migrant worker for more than five years, so I understand the environment here. In [Myanmar], I don't know the place where my family is going and my family also doesn't know about the new situation [in Bawa], so I will bring them here," Win Kay Thi said.

"Others in the village are also talking about moving to Thailand," she added. "People in the area are very worried about their future. Right now buildings are mushrooming. They are accelerating the building."

The International Organization for Migration recently estimated 1.4 million unregistered Burmese workers and family members already in Thailand.

"When locals first heard about the project, grassroots people were very optimistic," Saw Frankie Abreu said. "They thought they would get job opportunities, maybe transportation would be better, maybe they can start taking local goods to markets in the city better. Then they started realizing the challenges."

ေတာင္နဲ့ ဘ၀ ထပ္တူ

2012-02-27T09:54:00.001-08:00

Dawei Development: Environmental Impact Assessment team a major concern for villagers

2012-02-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

Local villagers affected by the development of the controversial Dawei (Tavoy) Special Economic Zone in Southern Burma say they are disappointed with the team from Chulalongkorn University Environmental Research Institute hired by the Italian-Thai Development Company to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on the project.

Villagers from Kaw Tee Lor (Thebyut Chaung) and the the University’s EIA team met to discuss aspects of the route the construction of the Tavoy-Kanchanaburi highway would take. The villagers said the Thai surveyors would or could not answer their questions about the project and only emphasized project benefits.

Saw Aye, a villager, who attended the meeting told Karen News “They [EIA team] showed us a map of the car road. They said this road is for your village’s development. They have already finished building a ‘dust’ road [unsealed]. In 2012 to 2015 they will finish building four-lane highway. In 2017 they said will extend it up to eight lanes.”

Video footage seen by Karen News of the EIA meeting filmed by a villager shows a surveyor with a map of the project who tells the villagers the Tavoy project will be a link to India. The team members seen in the video appear nervous a team leader is controlling the team members.

Saw Aye said the asked the villagers a series of questions and offered only a basic rationale of how it would affect the villagers.

“They asked us did we know the road will pass through our village? Do you know the road is for transportation and for an electricity line? It will make transportation better for you? We already knew this. But when we asked exactly how wide the road would be and how far it will extend, they said they didn’t know. The villagers asked how the company plans to take care of the local peoples’ land and plantations? When we asked about the plantations, houses and farms destroyed by the company, they replied that they cannot answer these questions.”

Saw Aye said villagers also asked the Chulalongkorn University EIA team how the development would impact on local rivers and land they were met with silence.

“We asked them what environmental impacts the project will have on our village, for example, if the company clears trees how will the river we use be affected. We asked what other planned projects for the area are linked to the Dawei project? They didn’t give us any answers.”

Saw Aye said the meeting with the Chulalongkorn University Environmental Research Institute team was a huge disappointment to the villagers.

“Some villagers are disappointed and others left the meeting before it had finished, other villagers did not fill out the forms given to them by the EIA surveyors.”

The ITD Company is a Thai owned company that is developing the $60 billion mega Tavoy/Dawei Development Project in Tavoy, Southern Burma. The project includes a deep-sea port, a 250-square-kilometer light and heavy industrial zone, a 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant, and railways link to the Thai border in Kanchanaburi. The super highway system will also have transmission lines and oil and gas pipelines constructed alongside it.

Since December 2011, the Karen National Union had blocked the ITD road construction due to villagers concerns of how the project would affect their farms and the environment. The KNU lifted its blockage on the road construction after the ITD agreed to carry out environmental impact assessment. The KNU says the agreement is only for an access road for to allow the EIA and Social Impact Assessment to survey the route for highway.

The Dawei Special Economy Zone planned construction has run into a number of problems that have delayed it. These include the KNU’s ban on the road construction, armed conflict in the project area, the Burma government’s cancellation of a 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant and the opposition from thousands of local people who will be evicted from their homes.

ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းအတြင္းရွိ ဒီေရေတာမ်ား အေပၚတြင္ မွီခိုေနရေသာ ေဒသခံ ေရလုပ္သားမ်ား ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြ ရရွိရန္ေမွ်ာ္လင့္

2012-02-23T19:54:00.002-08:00

တနသၤာရီတိုင္းေဒသႀကီး၊ ထား၀ယ္ခ႐ိုင္၊ ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္၊နဘုလယ္ေဒသတြင္ တည္ေဆာက္ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ ေဆာင္ရြက္လ်က္ရွိေသာ ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ႏွင့္ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္း တည္ေဆာက္မႈအတြက္ ေျမဧရိယာ (၂၀၄.၅၀၈၈၂) စတုရန္းကီလိုမီတာ၊ (၅၀၅၃၅.၀၂၃၃) ဧက လ်ာထား သတ္မွတ္ထားၿပီး ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြ ေပးအပ္ျခင္းႏွင့္ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းေနရာခ်ထားမႈအတြက္ စီစဥ္မႈမ်ားကို ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ ဆိပ္ကမ္း အေထာက္အကူျပဳ အဖြဲ႕မွ ျပဳလုပ္လ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

အဆိုပါအဖြဲ႕မွ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြ ေပးအပ္ရန္ ျပဳစုထားေသာ စာရင္းမ်ားအရ လယ္ေျမ(၈၂၇၂)ဧက၊ ဥယ်ာဥ္ၿခံ(၂၇၃၆၉)ဧက၊ စနိ (၂၀၆)ဧကႏွင့္ အျခားေျမမ်ား ပါရွိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ အဆိုပါစီမံကိန္း အတြင္းရွိ ေဒသခံမ်ားအတြက္ မွီခိုအားထားရာ လုပ္ငန္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည့္ေဒသ အေခၚရပ္ေတာ(ဒီေရေတာ)မ်ား ကိုမူ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြသတ္မွတ္ရာ တြင္ပါ၀င္ျခင္းမရွိ၍ ၎ရပ္ေတာမ်ားအေပၚ မွီခိုလုပ္ကိုင္ေနရေသာ ေဒသခံေရလုပ္သားမ်ားက ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြ သတ္မွတ္ေပးေစလိုေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

“ဒီရပ္ေတာ(ဒီေရေတာ)ေတြ မွာ ကဏန္း၊ ငါးနဲ႔ အျခားပင္လယ္ထြက္ ပစၥည္းေတြကို လုပ္ကိုင္ၾကပါတယ္။ ဂဏန္းလုပ္တာက အ၀ယ္ဒိုင္ေတြဆီကေန ႀကိဳတင္ေငြထုတ္ေပးထားၿပီး ရသမွ်ကဏန္းေတြကို သူတို႔ဆီပို႔ရတာပါ။ ရပ္ေတာေတြက သီဟို႒္ပင္ထက္ တန္ဖိုးရွိတယ္။ သီဟို႒္က ရာသီခ်ိန္ေရာက္မွ အသီး သီးတာ။ ဒီရပ္ေတာေတြကေတာ့ တစ္ႏွစ္ပတ္လုံး လုပ္ကိုင္လို႔ရေတာ့ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔လိုဒီေနရာကို မွီခိုေနသူ ေတြအတြက္ ထမင္းအိုးႀကီးလိုပါ။ တစ္ႏွစ္ကို ဘယ္ေလာက္ရလဲဆိုတာ ကေတာ့ ပုံေသေျပာလို႔ မရပါဘူး။ တစ္လမွာ သုံးခါ ေငြရွင္းပါတယ္။ တစ္ခါရွင္းရင္ တစ္သိန္းေလာက္ အနည္းဆုံးရွိတယ္။ ကဏန္းကို ပိႆာအလိုက္ ေရာင္းပါတယ္။ ကဏန္းျခင္းတစ္ခါေဖာ္ရင္ ပိႆာ (၅၀)ေလာက္ရတယ္။တစ္လကို ရမ်ားတဲ့အခါရွိသလို အရနည္းတဲ့ အခါလည္းရွိေတာ့ ပွ်မ္းမွ်၀င္ေငြ(၃) သိန္းေလာက္ေတာ့ ရပါတယ္။ ဒီၾကားထဲက ငါးေထာင္ၿပီးေရာင္းလို႔လည္း ရတယ္။ စားလည္းစားတာေပါ့။ အခု သူတို႔စီမံကိန္းနဲ႔ မလြတ္လို႔ ေျပာင္းခိုင္းလိုက္ရင္ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔ အလုပ္လက္မဲ့ျဖစ္ပါၿပီ။ ဒီေနရာမွာပဲ ဒီအလုပ္ရွိတာ။ တျခားေနရာ မွာ ဘာလုပ္ရမွာလဲ။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔ အခု အလုပ္လုပ္ၿပီး စားေသာက္ ေနရတဲ့ရပ္ေတာ(ဒီေရေတာ)ေတြ မရွိရင္ ဘာလုပ္ရဦးမွာလဲ။ ဒီအတြက္ ရပ္ေတာႀကီးကို မွီခိုေနရတဲ့ သူေတြအတြက္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကး ေပးေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔ တစ္ရြာလုံးရပ္ေတာ (ဒီေရေတာ)ေတြကိုပဲ မွီခိုၿပီး စားေသာက္ေနရတာ။အခု ေတာ့ ဒီေနရာကိုပစ္သြားရေတာ့ မယ္။ ကိုယ့္ထမင္းအိုးႀကီးကို ပစ္သြားရသလိုပါပဲ”ဟု နဘုလယ္ ေဒသရွိ ဗ်စ္နီရြာမွရပ္ေတာ (ဒီေရ ေတာ)တြင္ လုပ္ကိုင္စားေသာက္ ေနသူဦးေဖ၀င္းက ေျပာျပသြားခဲ့သည္။

Burma will upgrade two airports to international status

2012-02-22T09:23:00.000-08:00

Burma is planning to create two more international airports, one in Bago to serve central Burma, and one at the Dawei deep-sea port project in the south, according to Civil Aviation Department officials. Both airports, which already exist, will be upgraded to international standards

Foreign investment is invited, most probably from Japan and Singapore, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The two planned airport upgrades will become the Hanthawaddy International Airport in central Bago region, about 80 kilometres from Rangoon, and the Dawei International Airport at the Dawei deep-sea port in southern Tanintharyi Region.

The existing Dawei domestic airport will be upgraded to international status within three years at a cost of about US$ 4 million, officials at the Civil Aviation Department were quoted as saying.

The Italian-Thai Development Public Company is now expanding the Dawei airport runway and expansion of other facilities will follow, said the news agency.

At present, Burma has three international airports, and 29 regional airports; international airports are located in Rangoon, Naypyitaw and Mandalay.

Construction of the Dawei deep-sea port and industrial zone with road and rail links to Thailand is now underway. The project, which is estimated to cost $13 billion, is projected to be completed in 10 years in three phases.

Analyst warns of potholes in Myanmar

2012-02-20T02:34:00.002-08:00

Foreign firms such as the SET-listed Italian-Thai Development Plc (ITD) should exercise caution when investing in Myanmar, as democratic reforms will take time and huge challenges remain, say analysts.

Horst Rudolf, an Asia political and economics analyst, said reforms to modernise Myanmar are real and substantial, and most people there including military officers are happy with the changes.

But despite the huge opportunities, several challenges remain, including upgrading the quality of the banking system, foreign exchange, the tax system, and finding reliable local partners, Mr Rudolf, who was the German ambassador to Myanmar from 1998-2001, told a forum hosted by Ipsos Business Consulting.

Mr Rudolf recommended that ITD, the Thai contractor granted a 75-year concession for the special economic zone in Dawei on eastern coast of Myanmar, be aware of social resistance while implementing its project.

"The Dawei developer must not think it can invest there just to enjoy cheaper labour than Map Ta Phut on Thailand's eastern seaboard, otherwise it will face resistance," he said.

Construction of ITD's 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Dawei abruptly halted earlier this year due to domestic outcry over the plant's environmental impact.

The decision to put the brakes on the plant follows the suspension last October of the Chinese-led, $3.6-billion Myitsone Dam on the Irrawaddy River, also for environmental reasons.

If completed as planned in 2017, it will be the 15th largest hydroelectric power station in the world. Slated to be 152 metres wide and 152 metres high, it is being built by Burmese government contractors and China Power Investment Corporation.

Estimates are it will provide 3,600 to 6,000 MW of electricity primarily for Yunnan, China.

Analysts said the suspension illustrates the unpredictable business climate in Myanmar as a new government seeks to boost its public image while attracting investors to the economy.

"Investors need to communicate more and take part in social projects for the Dawei project to be successful. It's not that easy," said Mr Rudolf.

"The long-term outlook is still good, but companies cannot just bribe, invest and go."

He said businesses from Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore could benefit from Myanmar's opening up to the international community.

"Companies unfamiliar with Myanmar may want to combine forces with firms in these countries before they invest there," he noted.

"Investors should go there and look around as reforms are still in the early stages."

Steve Marshall, liaison officer at the International Labour Office in Myanmar, said sanctions on businesses from the US, the European Union, Australia and Canada that work with Myanmar companies still need to be lifted.

"The country is on the right track, but the reform progress is fragile and still has a long way to go," he said.

Burma's opening a golden opportunity

2012-02-17T06:04:00.000-08:00

Thailand's major petroleum and construction firms are focusing their strategic investments on Burma to cash in on the country's increasing opportunities, especially infrastructure projects.

PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP), a national petroleum exploration and production company, said it saw Burma as a focus for its investments over the next five years.

President and chief executive officer Anon Sirisaengtaksin said the company would allocate about Bt60 billion of its capital investment to its petroleum exploration and production projects in Burma. The money accounts for 10 per cent of PTTEP's total investment, worth about Bt600 billion, set aside for the next five years.

He said PTTEP was currently investing in five operating projects and two joint ventures in petroleum exploration and production. He added that he expected Burma would deliver a large contribution to PTTEP's revenues in the next five to 10 years.

Anon spoke at a forum on "The New Burma and Investment Opportunities in Thailand and India" organised yesterday by Maybank Kim Eng Securities (Thailand).

As a top-10 publicly listed company on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, PTTEP operates more than 40 projects in 13 countries around the world.

Anon said Thailand was its main focus, and Burma second.

"PTTEP has been operating in Burma for 20 years with a long-term and sustainable development strategy. Burma is now the company's strategic country for our future investments," said Anon.

He said Burma was becoming a hot spot for foreign investors after being largely closed for almost 50 years.

"Burma has quite a lot of potential because it is located between two giant economies, which are China and India. The country is a gateway to Indochina," Anon said.

He said Burma contained many diverse and unexplored resources such as hydroelectric power, oil, gas and coal.

"Burma has many of similarities to Thailand, such as its size and culture. Only its GDP and energy consumption are lower," said Anon.

Anon said PTTEP was looking for strategic investments in Burma in partnership with major oil and technological companies.

He said major concerns raised by foreign investors are the country's new rules and regulations regarding foreign investments as well as the lifting of trade and business sanctions by the United States and the European Union after a general election to be held by midyear. Other concerns are the government adjusting its exchange rate from a multiple to a single rate, and the development of local skilled labour.

He said PTTEP's key success to doing business in Burma was the company's relationship with the Burmese government and stakeholders. It has also adopted a "win-win strategy" of negotiations with stakeholders and extensively invested in socio-economic programmes, he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei development for Italian-Thai Development (ITD), said the company had been granted the right to develop and operate the Dawei Deep Sea Port and Industrial Estate Project under a framework agreement signed between the Burma Port Authority and ITD in November 2010 for a 75-year land-lease period.

The project was created under the joint effort and cooperation between the Burma and Thailand to develop a deep-seaport and industrial-estate mega-project that would be a gateway to Indochina on the Indian Ocean.

Requiring an initial investment of about US$8.5 billion (Bt260 billion) and occupying about 250 square kilometres, the Dawei Deep Sea Port and Industrial Estate Project will be divided into different zones, comprising port and heavy industry, oil and gas industry, an upstream petrochemical complex, medium industry, light industry, and authority and township centres.

Somchet said the development of the Dawei project would be separated into two phases, which would take four and six years respectively.

Thitisesh Seshthabutra, assistant director-general of the Department of Trade Negotiations, said Burma posted $31.6 billion in gross domestic product last year. The country exports natural gas, wood products, beans, fish and rice. About 38.3 per cent of the exports go to Thailand, and another 20.8 per cent to India.

In 2011, Thailand was Burma's largest trading partner while Burma was Thailand's 22nd-largest.

Within Asean, Burma is the sixth-largest trading partner of Thailand after Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The bilateral trade volume reached $6.1 billion last year in favour of Burma. Thailand also exported $2.8 billion of goods to Burma last year.

Thitisesh added that Thailand was also the second-largest investor in Burma after China. Thailand's investment in Burma reached $9.5 billion last year.

He said that as the newest Asean member, Burma was preparing to join the Asean Economic Community fully by 2015. Burma wants to cash in on AEC benefits, which encourage a free flow of goods, services, investments and skilled labour.

"Burma is a country rich in resources and a source of raw materials. However, major concerns between Burma and Thailand are border problems that have not been solved, as well as Burma's security problems and other cross-border issues. Burma's multiple exchange rate also creates various economic distortions," Thitisesh said.

India bound to be the leader of South and Southeast Asia?

2012-02-14T13:07:00.001-08:00

NEW DELHI, India, Feb. 14 —There’s no doubt that India which is the second most populous county in the world with a soaring 1.22 billion people is becoming a power to reckon with in South Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) who look up to it for help in meeting the challenges and opportunities facing this part of the globe.

Speaking at the Delhi Dialogue lV on Monday at the Taj Hotel, Thailand’s minister of foreign affairs, Surapong Tovichakchaikul confirmed this when he said it is widely acknowledged that this 21st century belongs to Asia and we—India and the ASEAN—will be engines of global economic growth.

Saying that India has become a key partner in the ASEAN-centered regional architecture, Tovichakchaikul said in his speech that ASEAN-India relation this year is marked with economic dynamism which he believes to be a strong foundation for a forward-looking and inclusive economic growth to help ASEAN to be more open, prosperous, peaceful and stable.

As one of the world’s fastest economies, the ASEAN with its single market and production base of 600 million people has produced a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of US$ 1.8 trillion, according to Tovichakchaikul who further explained that ASEAN and India have created an integrated market of 1.8 billion people with a combined GDP of US$ 3.6 trillion or 5.7 percent of the world’s GDP.

At present, India is continuing its role in development of transport linkages within ASEAN, including road, rails, air, sea links to the master plan on ASEAN connectivity (MPAC) where member countries have a common agenda to create a seamless connectivity between the two regions.

The Thai foreign affairs minister also spoke of both parties focusing to accelerate the completion of the Thai-Myanmar-India Trilateral Highway and the creation of an eastward highway to Laos and Cambodia as well as another project to connect India-Myanmar-Laos-Cambodia-Viet Nam.

On Thailand’s part, it is building roads, and rails to the Thai-Myanmar border to eventually link up the Dawei Deep seaport.

Once completed, the Dawei Deep Seaport would transport the port into a trading hub linking Southeast Asia with the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and Africa.

Ambitious Dawei project faces uncertainty

2012-02-14T13:03:00.001-08:00

DAWEI, Myanmar – Dusty roads and makeshift offices are the only hints of the ambitious US$50-billion project slated for the thick jungles near Myanmar’s southern city of Dawei, billed by its developers as the “new global gateway of Indo-China”.

Big questions surround the far-reaching plans by Thailand’s largest construction firm, Italian-Thai Development, to transform 250 square kilometres (97 square miles) of scrubland in Tanintharyi Region into Southeast Asia’s largest industrial complex.

“There is very little activity around here related to this project. A lot of us wonder if they are really confident enough about it to go forward with it,” said U Kyaw Naing Oo, 40, a trader in Maungmakan, whose white-sand beaches would border the project.

That comment is echoed by other villagers, industry analysts and even the government.

In a country where a third of the 60 million people live on less than $1 a day, Dawei is striking in its scale and ambition.

Super-highways, steel mills, power plants, shipyards, refineries, pulp and paper mills and a petrochemical complex are part of it, as are two golf courses and a holiday resort – all strategically nestled in Southeast Asia between rising powers India and China.

But just over a year since the former government signed a deal to create Myanmar’s first and biggest special economic zone (SEZ) at Dawei, the project has made little headway, despite the dramatic political reforms sweeping the country and the prospect of a gradual lifting in Western sanctions.

Italian-Thai has yet to secure $8.5 billion to finance construction of its first phase – roads, a telecoms network, utilities and a port – after building a dirt road of more than 100km (62 miles) to neighbouring Thailand. Its executives hope to find a strategic partner by year-end and plan to present the project to potential investors in South Korea this month.

Energy Minister U Than Htay told Reuters last week that at least two other SEZs would be developed more quickly than Dawei: the Thilawa project near the commercial capital, Yangon, and Kyaukpyu, where the China-Myanmar pipeline starts and a deepsea port is nearly finished.

“It is faster than the Dawei zone,” he said of Kyaukphyu. “Now we are considering supplying the electricity at Kyaukpyu,” he said.

Securing a stable source of electricity has been at the heart of Dawei’s problems since the government abruptly halted construction of a 4000 megawatt coal-fired power plant in the area on January 10, citing environmental concerns.

Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei Development Co Ltd, controlled by Italian-Thai, told Reuters on January 23 that its power plant partner, Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding, would decide on a fuel type within three months, including the possible use of natural gas funnelled to the site via a 50km (31-mile) pipeline from fields within Myanmar.

But U Than Htay ruled out using natural gas to fuel Dawei.

“Up to now the electric power supply for that project is not sure,” he said.

In a country beset by chronic electrical outages, powering even a home can be difficult, let alone an industrial zone. Blackouts are common across the country, even at Yangon’s international airport.

That puts pressure on Ratchaburi, whose involvement is limited to a feasibility study as “a preliminary step”, it said in a November 16 statement.

U Than Htay stressed other ministries would decide Dawei’s future, not his. But he offered his personal view of what the government will do: “My guess is sell out, according to the contract made by the previous government.”

Italian-Thai , which signed a 60-year concession to develop Dawei 14 months ago, has brushed aside those comments. Somchet of Dawei Development Co insists the project will go ahead. “It’s at the point of no return. They can say whatever they want but the final decision will depend on the special committee chaired by Myanmar’s president,” Somchet told Reuters on January 27.

He has a powerful local partner. A quarter of Dawei Development is held by Max Myanmar Group, owned by tycoon U Zaw Zaw.

Thailand’s top lender, Bangkok Bank, is advising on the power project and Siam Commercial Bank on the whole project.

Companies that Italian-Thai has identified as possible investors include Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp, Mitsui & Co and Sumitomo Corp, and South Korea’s POSCO.

Japanese Trade and Economy Minister Yukio Edano discussed the project with the Myanmar and Thai governments when he visited both countries last month.

“This project is huge and is getting a lot of interest from foreign investors,” said Somchet, who personally met Edano and sees Dawei as a possible location for Japanese firms to build parts for use at car manufacturing plants in Thailand, as well as a low-cost location for industrial production for Thai companies.

He expects much of the infrastructure, including a proper road to Thailand, to be completed within three years, creating a stable route for cargo sent to Dawei from the Middle East and Africa for shipping to Bangkok and beyond in Southeast Asia, bypassing the congested Strait of Malacca.

Brokers appear less sure.

In a recent note to clients, Singapore stock brokerage DBS Vickers Securities highlighted the risks.

“Despite potential to bring economic prosperity to Myanmar, the project is still in its infancy and clouded with risks,” it said. “The sudden call to halt the 4000MW coal-fired power plant project would make it difficult for Italian-Thai to secure strategic partners to help fund the project.”

It described Dawei Development Co’s plans to sell land in the area to raise funds for the project as “optimistic” and stressed that without strategic partners and firm funding, Dawei Development would remain a drag on Italian-Thai’s earnings this year.

In the year to date, Italian-Thai shares have underperformed those of its peers and the overall market due to uncertainty over the Myanmar project. The stock has risen just 0.1 percent in the past 12 months.

Italian-Thai has an “Analyst Revision Score” of 14 under a model by earnings-tracker StarMine which ranks stocks according to changes in analyst sentiment, with 100 representing the highest rank.

Kanit Sangsubhan, director of the Thai Finance Ministry’s Economic and Financial Research Institute, told Reuters Dawei would need heavy government involvement or state enterprises to co-invest.

Whether that will happen is unclear. U Than Htay of Myanmar’s Energy Ministry said the government wanted to promote more private involvement. “Regarding the petroleum refineries or the downstream plants, now most of the plans will be taken charge of by the private sector. Up to now, I have no plan to participate in that area because I need to mind existing jobs.”

PTT Exploration and Production, Thailand’s top state-controlled oil and gas explorer, has shown little interest in the project, and neither has its parent, PTT, Thailand’s biggest company.

“It is still very early days on Dawei,” said Sean Turnell, an expert on Myanmar’s economy at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “They are better off having a special economic zone near Yangon. Dawei mainly benefits Thailand. There are not a lot of benefits to Myanmar from that one.” – Reuters

ျမန္မာ့ေလေၾကာင္းမွ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္၊ ထား၀ယ္ စသည့္ ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားကို ဗဟိုျပဳကာ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံနယ္စပ္ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားသို႔ ေျပးဆဲဲြရန္စီစဥ္

2012-02-12T09:30:00.001-08:00

ျမန္မာ့ေလေၾကာင္းလိုင္းမွ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္၊ ထား၀ယ္စသည့္ ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားကို ဗဟိုျပဳကာ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံရွိ နယ္စပ္ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားသို႔ ေျပးဆဲြရန္ စီစဥ္လ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။

ယင္းသို႔စီစဥ္ရျခင္းမွာ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္၊ ထား၀ယ္စသည့္ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားမွ ျမ၀တီ(မဲေဆာက္)၊ ဘန္ေကာက္ စသည့္ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားသို႔ ကူးသန္းေရာင္း၀ယ္လ်က္ ရွိသည့္ ကုန္သည္မ်ား ႏွင့္ ခရီးသည္မ်ား ေန႔စဥ္ရွိေနသည္ ကို သိရွိရသည့္အတြက္ ယင္းသို႔ တိုက္႐ိုက္ေလေၾကာင္းလိုင္း ေျပးဆဲြရန္ စီစဥ္ျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ယင္းသို႔ ေလေၾကာင္းလိုင္း ေျပးဆဲြရန္ စီစဥ္ရာတြင္ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္၊ ထား၀ယ္စသည့္ ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားမွ ဘန္ေကာက္၊ မဲေဆာက္၊ ဟြာဟင္း စသည့္ၿမိဳ႕မ်ားသို႔ ေျပးဆဲြရန္ ကနဦးလ်ာထားၿပီး ယင္းၿမိဳ႕မ်ားမွ ေဒသခံမ်ားအား စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ၿပီးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

“ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္၊ ထား၀ယ္စတဲ့ ၿမိဳ႕ေတြကေန ဘန္ေကာက္၊ မဲေဆာက္လို ၿမိဳ႕ေတြကို ကုန္သည္ေတြ သြားလာမႈရွိတယ္ဆိုတာ သိရတယ္။ တျခားကိစၥနဲ႔သြားတ့ဲ ခရီးသည္ေတြလည္း ရွိတာေၾကာင့္ တိုက္႐ိုက္ေလေၾကာင္းလိုင္း ေျပးဆဲြဖို႔ စီစဥ္ေနပါတယ္။ လက္ရွိမွာေတာ့ ခရီးသည္ အေျခအေနကို သိရဖို႔ စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူမႈေတြ ျပဳလုပ္ၿပီးပါၿပီ”ဟု ျမန္မာ့ေလေၾကာင္းမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူတစ္ဦးက ေျပာျပခဲ့သည္။

“ကြၽန္ေတာ္က ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ၿမိဳ႕ကေနၿပီး ဘန္ေကာက္၊ မဲေဆာက္ ကို ကုန္ပစၥည္းေတြ အေရာင္းအ၀ယ္ လုပ္ေနက်ပါ။ ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႔ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ကေနၿပီး ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ နယ္စပ္ၿမိဳ႕ေတြကို ေလေၾကာင္းန႔ဲ သြားလာႏိုင္မယ္ဆိုရင္ အခုထက္ အမ်ားႀကီး ပိုအဆင္ေျပႏိုင္မွာပါ” ဟု ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ၿမိဳ႕မွ ေဒသခံတစ္ဦးက ေျပာျပခဲ့သည္။

ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္မွ အသံုးျပဳမည့္ေရအတြက္ ေရကာတာ ေဆာက္လုပ္ရန္စီစဥ္

2012-02-06T09:19:00.000-08:00

တနသၤာရီတိုင္းေဒသႀကီး ထား၀ယ္ခ႐ိုင္ ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္း အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္လ်က္ရွိေသာ ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူး စီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းတြင္ အသံုးျပဳ မည့္ေရအတြက္ ယင္းစီမံကိန္း၏ အေရွ႕ဘက္ ၁၀ မိုင္ခန္႔အကြာရွိ ကလံုးထာ ေခ်ာင္းကို ေရကာတာျပဳလုပ္၍ ေရေပးေ၀ႏိုင္ရန္ စီစဥ္ထားေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။
တနသၤာရီတိုင္းေဒသႀကီး ထား၀ယ္ခ႐ိုင္ ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္း အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္လ်က္ရွိေသာ ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူး စီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းတြင္ အသံုးျပဳ မည့္ေရအတြက္ ယင္းစီမံကိန္း၏ အေရွ႕ဘက္ ၁၀ မိုင္ခန္႔အကြာရွိ ကလံုးထာ ေခ်ာင္းကို ေရကာတာျပဳလုပ္၍ ေရေပးေ၀ႏိုင္ရန္ စီစဥ္ထားေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ အဆိုပါ ေခ်ာင္းအနီးရွိ ကလံုးထာေက်းရြာမွာ ေရ၀ပ္ဧရိယာအတြင္း ပါ၀င္ေန၍ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းေပးရမည့္ အေျခအေနႏွင့္ ရင္ဆိုင္ေနရသည္။

“ဒီေနရာက ေခတ္အဆက္ဆက္ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရျခင္းမရွိဘဲ တည္ရွိလာခဲ့တာပါ။ ဒီေတာေတာင္ေတြထဲမွာ က်ားျဖဴ၊ ၾကံ့သူေတာ္၊ လိပ္ေၾကး၊ ေတာင္ဆိတ္၊ ေခ်၊ စိုင္အစရွိတဲ့ရွား ပါးတိရစၦာန္ေတြနဲ႔ တျခားသတၱ၀ါ ေတြ သစ္ေတာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးရွိတယ္။ ေရကာတာႀကီးသာ တည္ေဆာက္လိုက္ရင္ ရြာကေရနစ္ျမဳပ္သြားမွာ ေရမယူ ေစခ်င္လုိ႔ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ယူလို႔ရတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ေရကာတာ တစ္ခုတည္း အျမင့္ႀကီးမေဆာက္ဘဲနဲ႔ အခုေဆာက္မယ့္ ေနရာကေန တစ္မိုင္ေက်ာ္ေလာက္မွာရွိတဲ့ ပ်ဥ္းမေအာ္ဘက္မွာတစ္ခု၊ အခုလက္ရွိေနရာမွာ တစ္ခုနဲ႔ ႏွစ္ခု ေဆာက္လိုက္ရင္လည္း ေရလည္းရသြားမယ္။ ရြာလည္း ေျပာင္းစရာ မလိုေတာ့ဘူး။ ေရ၀ပ္ဧရိယာ နည္းသြားတဲ့ အတြက္ ပ်က္စီးဆံုး႐ႈံးမႈလည္း နည္းသြားမွာပါ”ဟု ကလံုးထာရြာသား တစ္ဦးက ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။

Dawei developer seeks funding

2012-02-06T09:00:00.001-08:00

Residents ride motorcycles down the main street in Dawei,
which will house a special economic zone and deepsea port.

BANGKOK – The clay model of Myanmar’s ambitious Dawei deepsea port and special economic zone sprawls across a long table on the 43rd floor of the headquarters of ItalianThai Development Pcl. Glossy posters hail it as the “new global gateway of IndoChina”.

But moving ahead with the first phase of the project is proving slow, despite the dramatic reforms sweeping Myanmar and the gradual lifting in Western sanctions as the former British colony emerges from half a century of isolation a prospect underlined on January 23 by plans by the European Union to ease some punitive measures.

In a rare interview, a senior executive at ItalianThai Development outlined on January 23 the company’s far reaching plans for a project that would transform the wild scrubland of southern Myanmar into Southeast Asia’s largest industrial complex.

In a country where a third of its 60 million people live on less than US$1 a day, Dawei is striking in its ambition.

Superhighways, steel mills, power plants, shipyards, refineries, pulp and paper mills and a petrochemical complex are part of the $50 billion project, as are two golf courses and a holiday resort all strategically nestled between rising powers India, China and Southeast Asia with a port on the Andaman Sea.

The company hopes to secure $8.5 billion by yearend to finance infrastructure and utilities under the first phase of the project, and is confident it will find partners, but it also acknowledges that convincing investors remains tough, particularly given Myanmar’s low level of infrastructure, visa restrictions and urgent need for currency reforms.

Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei Development Co, controlled by ItalianThai, told Reuters the first phase of construction roads, a telecoms network, utilities and a port would be completed within three-and-a-half years, along with a power plant, but it remains unclear what energy source the plant would use.

Myanmar’s government abruptly halted construction of a 4000 megawatt coalfired power plant on January 10, citing environmental concerns.

Somchet said its power plant partner, Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Pcl, would decide on fuel type within three months, including the possibility of using natural gas funnelled to the site on a 50-kilometre (31-mile) pipeline from fields within Myanmar.

In the year to date, ItalianThai shares have underperformed those of its peers and the overall market due to uncertainty over the Myanmar project.

“We think this project is visionary. It is a door that is opening Myanmar. At the same time, Myanmar has to open this door,” he said.

As Myanmar embarks on its most dramatic political changes since a 1962 military coup in what was then Burma, megaprojects like the 250-square-kilometre Dawei Special Economic Zone hint at a rapid acceleration in both investment and development.

But Somchet also illustrated some of the challenges that vex investors in Myanmar.

While they have completed construction of a road that will link Dawei to Bangkok 250km to the east, the border is not fully open due to disputes between Myanmar and Thailand over its exact demarcation.

Construction of the highway was delayed last year by ethnic Karen rebels who have since signed a preliminary peace deal with the government.

Customs facilities still need to be built.

Somchet is confident all that will be resolved. And while the road on the Myanmar side is not yet paved, he expects that, too, to be completed in about three years, creating a stable route for transport cargo that has been sent to Dawei from the Middle East and Africa for shipping to Bangkok and beyond in Southeast Asia, bypassing the lengthy and congested Strait of Malacca. Other challenges include Myanmar’s dual exchange rate.

While the currency is pegged at six kyat to a dollar, it changes hands unofficially at rates more than 120 times higher, forcing the government to seek help from the International Monetary Fund.

ItalianThai is looking for partners for the various parts of the project and the main ones are likely to come from China, Japan and South Korea, he said.

A quarter of Dawei Development is now held by Max Myanmar Group, owned by tycoon U Zaw Zaw, whose close ties to the Myanmar government put him on the US targeted sanctions list in 2009.

A November 15, 2007, U.S. diplomatic cable described Zaw Zaw as an “up and coming crony”.

That might have been a problem last year, when some potential partners, according to Somchet, were reluctant to express their interest in the project publicly for fear of upsetting business allies in the United States.

But since US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Myanmar in December, the mood has changed dramatically, he said.

Although he has had no major expressions of interest in the project by Western investors, potential Asian partners are decidedly more open.

Somchet said he met recently with Japanese Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano, for instance.

ItalianThai hopes Dawei could be a location for Japanese firms to build parts to be used at car manufacturing plants in neighbouring Thailand, among other uses.

An investment roadshow in South Korea is scheduled for late February.

Thailand’s top lender, Bangkok Bank, is advising on the power project and Siam Commercial Bank on the whole project.

Myanmar's ambitious Dawei project faces uncertainty

2012-02-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

DAWEI, Myanmar (Reuters) - Dusty roads and makeshift offices are the only hints of the ambitious $50 billion project slated for the thick jungles near Myanmar's southern city of Dawei, billed by its developers as the "new global gateway of Indo-China".

Big questions surround the far-reaching plans by Thailand's largest construction firm, Italian-Thai Development Pcl ITD.BK, to transform 250 sq kms (97 sq miles) of scrubland in southern Myanmar into Southeast Asia's largest industrial complex.

"There is very little activity around here related to this project. A lot of us wonder if they are really confident enough about it to go forward with it," said Kyaw Naing Oo, 40, a trader in Maungmakan, whose white-sand beaches would border the project.

That comment is echoed by other villagers, industry analysts and even the government.
In a country where a third of the 60 million people live on less than one U.S. dollar a day, Dawei is striking in its scale and ambition.

Super-highways, steel mills, power plants, shipyards, refineries, pulp and paper mills and a petrochemical complex are part of it, as are two golf courses and a holiday resort - all strategically nestled in Southeast Asia between rising powers India and China.

But just over a year since the former military junta signed a deal to create Myanmar's first and biggest special economic zone SEZ.L at Dawei, the project has made little headway, despite the dramatic political reforms sweeping the country and the prospect of a gradual lifting in Western sanctions as the former British colony emerges from half a century of isolation.

Italian-Thai has yet to secure $8.5 billion to finance construction of its first phase -- roads, a telecoms network, utilities and a port -- after building a dirt road of more than 100 km (62 miles) to neighbouring Thailand. Its executives hope to find a strategic partner by year-end and plan to present the project to potential investors in South Korea this month.

Myanmar Energy Minister Than Htay told Reuters last week that at least two other SEZs would be developed more quickly than Dawei: the Thilawa project near the commercial capital, Yangon, and Kyaukphyu, where the China-Myanmar pipeline starts and a deep-sea port is nearly finished.

"It is faster than the Dawei zone," he said of Kyaukphyu. "Now we are considering supplying the electricity at Kyaukphyu area," he said.

Securing a stable source of electricity has been at the heart of Dawei's problems since the government abruptly halted construction of a 4,000 megawatt coal-fired power plant in the area on January 10, citing environmental concerns.

ENERGY SUPPLY "NOT SURE"

Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei Development Co Ltd, controlled by Italian-Thai, told Reuters on January 23 that its power plant partner, Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Pcl RATC.BK, would decide on a fuel type within three months, including the possible use of natural gas funnelled to the site via a 50 kms (31 mile) pipeline from fields within Myanmar.

But Than Htay ruled out using natural gas to fuel Dawei.

"Up to now the electric power supply for that project is not sure," he said of Dawei.

In a country beset by chronic electrical outages, powering even a home can be difficult, let alone an industrial zone. Blackouts are common across the country, even at Yangon's international airport.

That puts pressure on Ratchaburi, whose involvement is limited to a feasibility study as "a preliminary step", it said in a November 16 statement.

Than Htay stressed other ministries would decide Dawei's future, not his. But he offered his personal view of what the government will do: "My guess is sell out, according to the contract made by the previous government."

Italian-Thai , which signed a 60-year concession to develop Dawei 14 months ago, has brushed aside those comments. Somchet of Dawei Development Co insists the project will go ahead. "It's at the point of no return. They can say whatever they want but the final decision will depend on the special committee chaired by Myanmar's president," Somchet told Reuters on January 27.

He has a powerful local partner. A quarter of Dawei Development is held by Max Myanmar Group, owned by Burmese tycoon Zaw Zaw, whose close ties to the government put him on the U.S. targeted sanctions list in 2009.

A November 15, 2007 U.S. diplomatic cable described Zaw Zaw as an "up and coming crony". Today he is one of Myanmar's most influential businessmen.

Thailand's top lender, Bangkok Bank BBL.BK, is advising on the power project and Siam Commercial Bank SCB.BK on the whole project.

Companies that Italian-Thai has identified as possible investors include Malaysia's Petroliam Nasional Bhd , Japan's Mitsubishi Corp (8058.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Mitsui & Co (8031.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Sumitomo Corp (8053.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), and South Korea's POSCO (005490.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Japanese Trade and Economy Minister Yukio Edano discussed the project with the Myanmar and Thai governments when he visited both countries last month.

"This project is huge and is getting a lot of interest from foreign investors," said Somchet, who personally met Edano and sees Dawei as a possible location for Japanese firms to build parts for use at car manufacturing plants in Thailand, as well as a low-cost location for industrial production for Thai companies.

He expects much of the infrastructure, including a proper road to Thailand, to be completed within three years, creating a stable route for cargo sent to Dawei from the Middle East and Africa for shipping to Bangkok and beyond in Southeast Asia, bypassing the congested Strait of Malacca.

"CLOUDED WITH RISKS"

Brokers appear less sure.

In a recent note to clients, Singapore stock brokerage DBS Vickers Securities highlighted the risks.

"Despite potential to bring economic prosperity to Burma, the project is still in its infancy and clouded with risks," it said. "The sudden call to halt the 4,000 megawatt coal-fired power plant project would make it difficult for Italian-Thai to secure strategic partners to help fund the project."

It described Dawei Development Co's plans to sell land in the area to raise funds for the project as "optimistic" and stressed that without strategic partners and firm funding, Dawei Development would remain a drag on Italian-Thai's earnings this year.

In the year to date, Italian-Thai shares have underperformed those of its peers and the overall market due to uncertainty over the Myanmar project. The stock has risen just 0.1 percent in the past 12 months.

Italian-Thai has an "Analyst Revision Score" of 14 under a model by earnings-tracker StarMine which ranks stocks according to changes in analyst sentiment, with 100 representing the highest rank.

Kanit Sangsubhan, director of the Thai Finance Ministry's Economic and Financial Research Institute, told Reuters Dawei would need heavy government involvement or state enterprises to co-invest.

Whether that will happen is unclear. Than Htay of Myanmar's Energy Ministry said the government wanted to promote more private involvement. "Regarding the petroleum refineries or the downstream plants, now most of the plans will be taken charge of by the private sector. Up to now, I have no plan to participate in that area because I need to mind existing jobs."

PTT Exploration and Production Pcl PTTE.BK, Thailand's top state-controlled oil and gas explorer, has shown little interest in the project, and neither has its parent, PTT Plc PTT.BK, Thailand's biggest company.

"It is still very early days on Dawei," said Sean Turnell, an expert on Myanmar's economy at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. "They are better off having a special economic zone near Yangon. Dawei mainly benefits Thailand. There are not a lot of benefits to Burma from that one."

IN DAWEI, MIXED VIEWS

In Dawei itself, views of the project are mixed.

Some such as Hsan Htoo, a 25-year-old high school dropout working on a fishing trawler, hope it can bring jobs to the impoverished area, where many live in thatched-roof huts and many young people have left to work in neighbouring Thailand.

"I heard that Dawei will create job opportunities for many local people. That would be very good. It would mean that we wouldn't have to leave our homes and work in other countries," he said.

Others worry about the potential environmental toll and health risks from a project that would be four times bigger than Thailand's largest industrial estate, Map Ta Phut, where pollution between 1996 and 2009 may have contributed to at least 2,000 cancer-related deaths, according to environmental activists who sought legal action to halt the estate in 2009.
"It is just not worth it," said Sein Win Aung, a 34-year-old private taxi owner who came out to listen to opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi address a crowd of thousands in Dawei on Sunday. "We hear about the problems at the industrial estate in Thailand. We don't want those problems here."

Some activists visited Map Ta Phut to see the impact first-hand.

In a sign of dramatic change in Myanmar, a village advocacy group has been formed to oppose the project. The Dawei Development Group has raised concern that as many as 32,000 people would be displaced in a region known for its pristine coast, groves of coconut palms and plantations of cashews, mango and rubber.

Such groups would have been quickly shut down, their leaders arrested, during the half-century of military rule that ended last March when a nominally civilian government took office.

Instead, they are now becoming more organised, emboldened by the government's surprise suspension of the $3.6 billion, Chinese-led Myitsone dam project on September 30 following weeks of public outcry.

"What we want is for the project to be done with transparency. It may ultimately go ahead, but we want to make sure it is done by the rule of law and that environmental assessment studies are carried out," said one senior activist in Yangon who has worked closely with the Dawei Development Group.

But Dawei is an economic lifeline for villagers such as Win Aung, a 34-year-old driver for Italian-Thai, one of about 200 of the company's workers in Dawei. He used to work in Thailand, but hated it. He chafed at living away from his family. "I didn't enjoying working there at all. Most of my friends don't enjoy their jobs either but most people have no other choice."

He said the project was going ahead, and expects it will eventually transform the isthmus that separates the Andaman Sea from the Gulf of Thailand, strengthening Myanmar's relationship with India, China and Southeast Asia by linking them together in trade.

Bulldozers were clearing land, he said. Buildings for offices and staff quarters were being built, but no major construction had begun. Many villagers need to be relocated.

Italian-Thai is buying land from the locals but has yet to complete new homes where they would live, he said.

He remained optimistic about what it would mean for villagers like him. "It will create many, many job opportunities for local people," he said.

(Additional reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Dawei and Khettiya Jittapong and Pisit Changplayngam in Bangkok; Editing by Ed lane)

Thai energy workers strike in Tavoy

2012-02-03T03:56:00.000-08:00

Low salaries and poor working conditions have prompted workers for the Thai state-owned PTT energy company to go on strike in Tavoy [Dawei], the southern Burmese town currently being transformed into a massive industrial complex.

Around 60 labourers are dissatisfied at the $US5-a-day wages they are receiving, and complain that other companies involved in the project are paying their employees nearly double that.

Now in its fourth day, the strike threatens to draw further attention to the controversy surrounding the Tavoy venture, which upon completion in 2019 will become Southeast Asia’s largest industrial complex, and threatens to displace up to 30,000 people.

The workers say that on top of the low salary, they are required to work from dawn until dusk and are often denied meal breaks.

“About two weeks before our protest, the company gave us a contract to sign which demands we work 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” said one of the strikers. “There’s no benefit for us in that – only they [PTT] profit.”

He continued that PTT had not responded to a complaint lodged with its socioeconomic department, and 58 people began a strike on Tuesday. That number has now dwindled, but has had a nominal impact: PTT employees on Tuesday “promised a pay rise”, although the worker lamented that nothing had yet happened.

The group had been working on the Kanpauk gas pipeline project, one of a smorgasbord of features being developed for the industrial site, which will house petrochemical plants, steel mills and plastics factories, as well as a giant deep-sea port.

Plans for a 4,000 MW coal-fired power station were scrapped by the Burmese government in a shock move last month that drew the ire of Thailand, which had expected to receive around 3,400 MW of the output.

The project is led by the Thai construction giant Ital-Thai, but draws on migrant labour from across the region. One protestor said the mixture of different nationalities had created friction. “There aren’t enough water purifiers and the Chinese people point at things with their feet and not with a finger,” he said, referring to a practice considered rude in Burma.

The development is rapidly turning this quiet stretch of coastline in Tenasserim division into a vast construction site, with local campaigners fearing substantial environmental damage. But the government has attempted to portray the project as a signifier of its potential to become a key economic and strategic player in the region, given its geographical position as a gateway to ASEAN economies.

dvb.no

Burma Army sends troop reinforcements to Karen areas

2012-02-03T03:54:00.000-08:00

Despite agreeing to a ceasefire with the Karen National Union earlier this month the Burma Army is transporting food rations, military supplies and reinforcements in the Myitta sub-township Tanintharyi Division that is currently under the control of the KNU’s Brigade 4.

A Karen National Liberation Army source told Karen News that reinforcement – seven battalions from Burma Army’s Military Operations Command 20, Tactical Operations Command 1 and 3 were transported in 50 vehicles to the headquarters of Strategic Operations Command 1 at Yay Phyu village on January 29.

Strategic Operations Command 2 sent 20 trucks filled with rations to the Myitta army camp to be used to restock their Iwine base.

A military officer from the KNU’s Brigade 4 told Karen News.

“MOC 20 has arrived here, but MOC 13 and 8 who are here are not being replaced. We were informed they would roster their battalions yearly but so far there are no battalions leaving. It looks like they are only sending reinforcements to our area.”

Keeping the recent good will surrounding the ceasefire agreement, Saw Kweh Htoo Win, the KNU chairman of the Mergui-Tavoy District, Brigade 4 said he sees the situation differently.

“MOC 20 is supposed to swap with MOC 13, as they usually do. So far I haven’t seen any irregular activities. I don’t think they will do any activities that will damage the current peace talks between their government and us.”

Local villagers in the area confirmed to Karen News claims that they are being ordered by the Burma Army to carry its rations, using their own boats, so far 85 villagers from six villages in the Myitta sub-township had to obey the forced labor orders.

A KNU military source told Karen News that the Burma Army’s, Lt Colonel Aung Kyaw Win, led Infantry Battalion 104 and Major Zay Ya Han lead Light Infantry Battalion 560 forces are in charge for the transportation route security that the rations will take.

A Karen military source said the Burma Army is carrying out reinforcement and re-supplying its bases in KNU Brigades 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.

The KNU delegation and government representatives signed a preliminary agreement including a ceasefire at Pa-an, January 12.

According to the preliminary agreement, the KNU and government delegations will meet within 45 days – the KNU plans to discuss the withdrawal of Burma Army from KNU controlled territory in order to build trust between the two sides.

karennews.org

ထားဝယ္အိမ္ၿခံေျမမ်ား က်ပ္သိန္း ေသာင္းဂဏန္းအထိ ေပးဝယ္ေန

2012-02-02T03:40:00.000-08:00

ထားဝယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း ေဆာက္လုပ္မည့္ ေနရာကို ဇန္နဝါရီ ၃၀ ရက္ေန႔က ေတြ႕ရစဥ္ (ဓာတ္ပံု - ဧရာဝတီ)

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚႏွင့္ ၿမိဳ႕ျပင္ပရွိ အိမ္ၿခံေျမ ေစ်းႏႈန္းမ်ား အဆေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ထုိးတက္သြားခဲ့ၿပီး ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚတြင္ က်ပ္သိန္းေထာင္ဂဏန္းမွ ေသာင္းဂဏန္းထိ ေခၚေစ်းရွိေနေၾကာင္း၊ ပုဂၢလိကဘဏ္ အမ်ားစုက ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚတြင္ ဘဏ္ခြဲမ်ားလာေရာက္ဖြင့္လွစ္ျခင္းႏွင့္ ျပည္တြင္းျပည္ပ စီးပြားေရးကုမၸဏီမ်ားက ရုံးခြဲႏွင့္ ဟုိတယ္မ်ား ဖြင့္လွစ္လိုျခင္းတုိ႔ေၾကာင့္ ေစ်းမ်ား ထုိးတက္လာရျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ထား၀ယ္ စီးပြားေရး လုပ္ငန္းရွင္တဦးက ေျပာသည္။

“ေပ ၄၀x ၆၀ အကြက္က ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚဆုိရင္ သိန္း ၂၀၀၀၊ ၃၀၀၀ ကေန သိန္းတေသာင္းေက်ာ္ အထိ ေစ်းေခၚတယ္။ ၀ယ္တဲ့သူေတြလည္း ရွိတယ္။ ဥပမာ- မက္စ္ျမန္မာ ကုမၸဏီဆိုရင္ ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚမွာ သိန္းေထာင္ခ်ီေပးၿပီး ေျမကြက္ ၀ယ္ထားတယ္။ ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္စီမံကိန္း စလုပ္တုန္းကလည္း ေခၚေစ်းေတြ တအားထုိးတက္ သြားခဲ့ဖူးတယ္။ အဲဒီေနာက္ေတာ့ ျပန္ၿငိမ္တယ္။ အခု ျပန္တက္လာတာ” ဟု သူက ဆိုသည္။

ဒုတိယ သမၼတ သီဟသူရ ဦးတင္ေအာင္ျမင့္ဦး လာေရာက္ၿပီး ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ ေလယာဥ္ကြင္း ျပန္ျပင္ေရးႏွင့္ စီမံကိန္းကို ဆက္လက္ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္မည့္ အရိပ္အေရာင္မ်ား ျမင္ရေသာေၾကာင့္ ေအးေနေသာ အိမ္ၿခံေျမေစ်းမ်ား ျပန္တက္လာျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ဟု ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕ခံ တဦးက ရွင္းျပသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚတြင္ ေစ်းအႀကီးဆုံး အိမ္ၿခံေျမမ်ားမွာ အာဇာနည္ လမ္းမေပၚတြင္ တည္ရွိၿပီး ယင္းလမ္းတေလွ်ာက္တြင္ ပုဂၢလိက ဘဏ္ခြဲအမ်ားဆုံး ဖြင့္လွစ္ထားေၾကာင္း၊ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္လမ္း၊ နိဗၺာန္လမ္းတို႔ရွိ အိမ္ၿခံေျမႏွင့္ ေျမကြက္မ်ားမွာလည္း က်ပ္သိန္း ေထာင္ခ်ီ ေစ်းေခၚ ေရာင္း၀ယ္မႈ ရွိေၾကာင္း စုံစမ္းသိရွိရသည္။

“ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚတင္မကဘူး ေလယာဥ္ကြင္းနားက ၀ဲကၽြန္းမွာပါ ေျမကြက္ေတြ အေရာင္းအ၀ယ္ လိုက္လာတယ္။ ေလယာဥ္ကြင္း ခ်ဲ႕ဖို႕ကလည္း သိပ္မၾကာခင္ လုပ္မွာဆုိေတာ့ ေရနက္စီမံကိန္း ပီျပင္လာတာနဲ႔အမွ် ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚမွာလည္း အိမ္ေစ်း၊ ေျမေစ်း တက္ဖို႔ရွိတယ္” ဟု ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေန အိမ္ၿခံေျမ ၀ယ္ေရာင္း ပြဲစားတဦးက ဆုိသည္။

စည္ကားေနသည့္ ထားဝယ္ စည္ပင္သာယာေစ်းႀကီး (ဓာတ္ပံု - ဧရာဝတီ)

ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚတြင္ ဂရန္ပါရွိေသာ အိမ္ၿခံေျမေစ်းမွာ အနည္းဆုံး က်ပ္သိန္း ၁၀၀၀ မွ အမ်ားဆုံး က်ပ္သိန္း ၁ ေသာင္းခြဲအထိ ရွိသည္ဟု သိရွိရသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ ေရနက္စီမံကိန္းကို အီတာလ်ံ-ထုိင္း ကုမၸဏီက ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံထားၿပီး ယခုအခါ ဂ်ပန္အပါအဝင္ အာရွႏုိင္ငံမ်ားက ရင္းႏွီး ျမႇဳပ္ႏွံရန္ ေလ့လာမႈမ်ား ရွိေနေၾကာင္း၊ လက္ရွိတြင္ စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ ေျမသားလမ္းမ်ား ေဖာက္လုပ္ျခင္း၊ စီမံကိန္း ဧရိယာ ရွင္းလင္းျခင္းတုိ႔ ျပဳလုပ္ေနၿပီး စီမံကိန္းအၾကမ္းထည္ကို ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံမွ အင္ဂ်င္နီယာႏွင့္ အလုပ္သမားမ်ား၊ ျမန္မာ အလုပ္သမားမ်ား စုစုေပါင္း လုပ္သားအင္အား ေထာင္ဂဏန္းေက်ာ္ျဖင့္ အင္တုိက္အားတုိက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္လွ်က္ ရွိသည္။

Property Prices Rocket by Dawei Deep-Sea Port

2012-02-02T03:27:00.000-08:00

A construction site for the Dawei deep-sea port project
in southernmost Burma. (Photo: Irrawaddy)

Property and land prices in Dawei, also known as Tavoy, in southernmost Burma have sky-rocketing to hundreds of millions of kyat due to the development of the nearby Thai-backed deep-sea port project, claim local businessmen.

Real estate prices are highest around Ar Zar Ni Road, in downtown Dawei, where most private banks have opened branch offices. A businessman in Dawei said, “The prices go up because more commercial companies want to open branch offices and hotels in Dawei.”

According to local people, even land measuring just 40 by 60 feet can costs 200-300 million kyat. And despite the sky-rocketing prices, businesspeople have been clamoring to acquire land and property. Max Myanmar Company reportedly just purchased real estate in downtown Dawei for hundreds of millions of kyat.

Prices increased when the deep-sea port project began as speculators tried to make a quick profit, but these later came down and stablised.

“Then after Vice-President Tin Aung Myint Oo’s visit, prices went up again,” said a Dawei resident.

Tin Aung Myint Oo visited the Dawei project last month to oversee proposed renovations to the airport and continued construction work.

A property agent from Dawei said that land near the airport is also interesting buyers. He added that there will be more high prices in Dawei because of plans to expand the airport and deep-sea port.

The Italian-Thai Development Company originally invested in the Dawei deep-sea port project and now Japan and other Asian countries are conducting studies to determine whether to get onboard.

More than a thousand engineers and labors from Thailand and Burma are also working on road construction projects.

The Dawei deep-sea port project has courted controversy with campaigners worried about the adverse affect to the environment and forced relocation of local villages.

Some 4,000 megawatts of electrical power is required to run the industrial zone, which includes a coal facility that experts say will severely impact the livelihoods of local people.

The Burmese and Thai governments signed a contract in May 2008 to begin construction on the Technical Zone in Dawei deep-sea port.

The project is eight times bigger than the Map Ta Phut Industrial Zone in Rayong, Thailand, according to the Foundation for Ecological Recovery.

Map Ta Phut is estimated to have cost some 370 billion baht (US $10.5 billion) while the Dawei project is estimated at around 303 billion baht ($8.6 billion).

Dawei would become Burma's first Special Economic Zone, which includes plans to develop a 250 square-kilometre industrial estate with sea and land links to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as a gas pipeline to Thailand through Kanchanaburi Province.

Written on water

2012-02-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

Remapping the new Asia through changes along Burma’s coast
Try this. Take a map of the Indian Ocean and turn it upside down. The disorientation brought upon by the primacy given to the vastness of the high seas returns a sense of proportion to the world at India’s shores, but it still takes some adjusting to.
The new Great Game is said to be playing out on the waters of the Indian Ocean, and to get its measure, it is useful to be shaken out of our landmass-centric view of geography. Look at the map, this way and that.

Last week, when Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra arrived in Delhi as the Republic Day chief guest, she invited India to look at the map again. Speaking to business associations, she focused on her government’s participation in the development of a deep sea port in Dawei, on Burma’s Tenasserim coast along the Andaman Sea. On most maps you will find the town listed by its old name of Tavoy, and it lies practically on the same parallel from the equator as Chennai. The project’s eventual development cost is billed at more than $50 billion, and a highway will cut across the Thai-Burmese peninsula to connect it to Bangkok, and possibly beyond.

The seductions of the Dawei project are obvious. In a way akin to that in which the Panama and Suez canals freed ships of long-winded and hazardous passages around the South American and African coasts, it could change maritime maps by liberating trade from the Malacca Dilemma. The long, narrow passage between Malaysia and Indonesia’s Sumatra island is currently the only viable connection between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and worries about obstruction closing off the Indian Ocean in the east are understandable. It is a busy thoroughfare. An estimated 40 per cent of world trade must pass along it. While more than 80 per cent of China’s oil supplies pass through the straits, the percentage of Indian trade moving along is substantial too.
A passage by way of Burma’s Tenasserim coast would not just cut a journey’s length, it would reduce the risks of traffic and pirates as well as address the security implications of a sole viable route presented at the Malacca Straits. (Indeed, for long it has been rumoured that the Chinese harbour plans of eventually cutting a canal through the Kra isthmus in Thai territory, thereby connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. However, the stories of the engineering feat this would entail retain a fantastic edge and are not tethered in fact.)

But to understand why the Dawei option is now more salient, look at what else just transpired in this town that routinely invites the adjective “sleepy”. This weekend Dawei was the first port of call outside of Rangoon for Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she embarked on a countrywide campaign for her National League for Democracy for by-elections scheduled for April 1. In front of crowds that showed up to cheer her, she committed herself to working for deeper democratic change from within parliament.

It was a reminder that the Great Game east of India is taking place in a manner vastly different from that in its northwest: the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region is becoming more stable politically and more outward looking. To ease itself out of anxieties brought on by China’s fabled “string of pearls” port encirclement of the subcontinent, India must widen and texture its partnerships. It must, above all, think big and bold in participating in remaking the coastal maps. \

In Where China Meets India, his travels through Burma and its often restive peripheries, Thant Myint-U invites the reader to survey demographic and political changes in the three countries in a more integrative way than the turf-oriented strategies being outlined in and around Afghanistan. As land and sea connectivity becomes the axis along which Asian nations will increasingly strategise, rivalries will not be zero-sum games and will in fact thrive on overlays of economic and military partnerships.

It is not a coincidence that Myint-U concludes his inquiry with a tour of Tavoy. Looking past the sleepy town with its British-era bungalows and unspoilt beaches, he sees a possible future: the Indian and Pacific Oceans connected to render the loop around the Straits of Malacca, railway lines from Yunnan connecting to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, oil tankers from the Middle East docking here and oil being pipelined to and past Southeast Asia, and a highway through Burma connecting Tavoy with Manipur and Assam.

And what of the eastern seaboard along the Coromandel coast? In a book just out, Merchants of Tamilakam, historian Kanakalatha Mukund invites us to re-examine that map another way to lend it temporal depth. In a study spanning the millennium from the Sangam age (1st to 3rd century CE), through the rise of the Pallavas and Pandyas (6th century to 10th century), to the age of the Chola (9th to 13th century), she charts out the bazaars and the trade that sustained the first waves of urbanisation along the coast of what is now Tamil Nadu, as merchants traded with the Mediterranean region and Southeast Asia. Underlying this dynamism were institutional and political structures that made possible a more modern economy, allowing commerce with and between far-flung areas and integrating the internal economy with overseas markets.

Where Myint-U finds colonial-era towns on the verge of being catapulted to hectic activity as a new crossroads of Asia, Mukund brings alive old texts to evoke the smells and cosmopolitanism of long-ago hubs. Today’s container and tanker traffic may not hold the promise of reviving the romance of the bazaar, but it is nonetheless a call to pay a quiet nod to the seafarers of centuries past whose quest for new routes still animates visions of the future — and to that age-old lesson about the benefits that accrue when administrations enable mercantile activity.

Thousands cheer Suu Kyi on campaign trail

2012-01-30T09:54:00.000-08:00

Aung San Suu Kyi talks to supporters at Yae Phyu village
in Tavoy township January 29, 2012 (Reuters)

Huge crowds of jubilant supporters hailed Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she hit the campaign trail Sunday ahead of by-elections seen as a key test of the regime’s commitment to reform.

Tens of thousands flocked to get a glimpse of the Nobel Peace Prize winner in the coastal district of Tavoy, as she made her first political trip outside Rangoon since declaring she would stand for office in the 1 April polls.

Streets were flooded with local people waving flags, cheering and dancing with delight at the appearance of the democracy icon, who could be swept into parliament by the vote.

Surveying the sea of people packed along a main road in the southern town, Suu Kyi said she “chose the right place” to kick off her campaign tour.

“People need to watch to make sure the coming by-elections are free and fair. There should be no vote buying and no threats to get votes,” she told the crowd at the end of her one-day visit.

Suu Kyi’s decision to stand for a seat in parliament is the latest sign of dramatic change taking place in the country after the end of nearly half a century of outright military rule.

A new government dominated by former generals came to power last year following November 2010 elections that were marred by cheating and the absence of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

The regime has since surprised observers with a series of reforms, including welcoming the NLD back into the political mainstream, ceasefire deals with ethnic minority rebels and the release of hundreds of political prisoners.

Western nations are now considering easing sanctions, further raising hopes of an end to decades of isolation, but controversy surrounding the 2010 vote means the upcoming by-elections will be heavily scrutinised.

The NLD is running for all 48 seats up for grabs in the polls and Suu Kyi is standing in a rural constituency near Rangoon. Sunday’s visit was in support of Aung Soe, the party’s candidate in a local township.

“If we move in the right direction our country will have many opportunities. We are eager to seize them,” Suu Kyi said in a speech in Tavoy.

“For the security of the people, the rule of law is very important… We hope to give back to the people by working for more stability in people’s lives,” added the 66-year-old, known here as “The Lady”.

Local people brought flowers and gifts and held up their children to see the NLD leader, with banners proclaiming “You are our heart”.

Traffic clogged the roads as Suu Kyi’s convoy, trailed by a large number of cars and motorbikes, travelled around the district.

One 30-year-old woman told AFP that she was very glad Suu Kyi had chosen Tavoy for the first major stop on her campaign tour. “We love her,” she said.

Suu Kyi’s outing took her to an area set to be transformed by a huge industrial site and strategic deep sea port, the Dawei [Tavoy] Development Project.

The Thai-led, multi-billion dollar development has sparked fears of a potential influx of “dirty” industry and the displacement of thousands.

But in another sign of burgeoning reform, the government cancelled a proposed coal-fired power plant at the site this month citing “environmental problems”.

The April polls, held to fill places vacated by those elected in 2010 who have since become ministers and deputy ministers in the government, will be the first time Suu Kyi has been able to directly participate in a Burmese vote.

Her involvement may boost the legislature’s credibility, but the seats available are not enough to threaten a majority held by the army-backed ruling party.

Suu Kyi was released from house arrest days after the 2010 election and has seen increasingly warm relations with the new regime, with some suggesting she could even take a role in government if elected to parliament.

Her first political trip since being freed passed off peacefully last year when Suu Kyi visited the Pegu region north of Rangoon.

Security had been a concern as Suu Kyi’s convoy was attacked in 2003, in an ambush possibly organised by a junta frightened of her popularity.

The NLD won an election in 1990 by a landslide while Suu Kyi remained under house arrest, but the ruling generals ignored the result.

The party was stripped of its legal status after boycotting the 2010 elections, saying the rules were unfair.

ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီမံကိန္းေဒသ အိမ္ေျခ ၄၀၀၀ နီးပါး ေျပာင္းရမည္

2012-01-27T09:36:00.001-08:00

တနသၤာရီတိုင္း ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းဧရိယာတြင္ပါ၀င္သည့္ ေက်းရြာ၂၀ နီးပါးမွ အိမ္ေျခ ၄၀၀၀ နီးပါး ေျပာင္း ေရႊ႕ရန္ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ား က စီစဥ္ေနျခင္းအေပၚ ေဒသခံမ်ား က စိုးရိမ္ေနၾကေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

တနသၤာရီတိုင္း ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းဧရိယာတြင္ပါ၀င္သည့္ ေက်းရြာ၂၀ နီးပါးမွ အိမ္ေျခ ၄၀၀၀ နီးပါး ေျပာင္း ေရႊ႕ရန္ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ား က စီစဥ္ေနျခင္းအေပၚ ေဒသခံမ်ား က စိုးရိမ္ေနၾကေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

“ေျပာင္းရမယ့္ အေျခအေနေတြကို ရွင္းျပတာ မရွိေသးေတာ့ အနာဂတ္ စား၀တ္ေနေရးအတြက္ စိုးရိမ္မႈေတြ ျဖစ္ေနၾကတယ္၊ ေဒသခံ အမ်ားစုက မေျပာင္းခ်င္ၾကပါဘူး၊ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕မယ့္ကိစၥ သေဘာမတူရင္ ႐ုံးနဲ႔ပဲရွင္းၾကပါ ဆိုၿပီးေတာ့ ရြာအစည္းအေ၀းမွာ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္ေနၾကၿပီ”ဟု ထား၀ယ္ ခ႐ုိင္ ပုေဂါဇြန္း ရြာသား တဦး က ေျပာသည္။

ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရမည့္ သတင္းကို ဒု-သမၼတ ဦးတင္ေအာင္ျမင့္ဦး ထား၀ယ္ေဒသ သို႔ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ ရက္ပိုင္းက ေရာက္ရွိခဲ့ၿပီး ေနာက္ တေန႔တြင္ ေက်းရြာ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက လာေရာက္ေျပာဆို၍ သိရေၾကာင္း၊ သို႔ေသာ္ မည္သည့္ အခ်ိန္၊ မည္သည့္ ေနရာေဒသ သို႔ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕မည္ စသည့္ အခ်က္အလက္မ်ား ရွင္းလင္းမႈ မရွိဟုလည္း ေဒသခံမ်ား က ေျပာသည္။

ထား၀ယ္အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ အတြင္းရွိ ေက်းရြာ ၁၈ ရြာမွ အိမ္ေျခေပါင္း ၃၉၈၄ လုံး၊ အိမ္ေထာင္စု ၄၀၇၅ စုမွ လူဦးေရ ၂၀၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ေနရာ ခ်ထားေပးရန္ စီစဥ္ေနေၾကာင္း ဇန္န၀ါရီလ၂၄ ရက္ေန႔ထုတ္ အစိုးရ သတင္းစာမ်ား၌ ေရး သား ထားသည္။

ထား၀ယ္အထူးစီးပြားေရး ဇုန္တာ၀န္ခံ ဦးတင္ေမာင္ေဆြကလည္း ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ျဖင့္ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရန္ စီစဥ္ေနျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ဧရာ၀တီ ကို ေျပာသည္။

“လက္ရွိထက္ အဆင့္ျမင့္ျမင့္ ေနထိုင္ႏိုင္ေအာင္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးမွာပါ၊ ေျပာင္းရမယ့္ အိမ္ကလည္း အလြတ္မဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ ထမင္းအိုး၊ ဟင္းအိုး ပါ အဆင္သင့္ထည့္ေပးၿပီးမွ ေျပာင္းခိုင္းမွာပါ”ဟု ဦးတင္ေမာင္ေဆြ က ဆိုသည္။

စီမံကိန္းဧရိယာႏွင့္မလြတ္ကင္း၍ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရသည့္ ေက်းရြာမ်ားတြင္ ကာယကံရွင္မ်ား နစ္နာမႈမရွိေစရန္ ကိုယ္ခ်င္းစာ တ ရားျဖင့္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးၾကရန္ႏွင့္ အိမ္၊ လမ္း၊ ေက်ာင္း၊ ေဆး႐ုံ၊ ေစ်း၊ ေရ၊ လွ်ပ္စစ္မီး၊ အားကစားကြင္း စသည့္ အေျခခံလို အပ္ ခ်က္မ်ားကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ၿပီးမွသာ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ ေပးရန္လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္း ဒု-သမၼတ ဦးတင္ေအာင္ျမင့္ဦး က ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ဟု လည္း အစိုးရ သတင္းစာမ်ားက ေရးထားသည္။

“ဒု-သမၼတ ေျပာသြားတာက တမ်ဳိး၊ ရြာအာဏပိုင္ေတြ လုပ္ေနတာက တလြဲ ၊ ဒု-သမၼတ က ေဒသခံေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႔မယ္ေျပာေတာ့ ရြာသားေတြသြားၾကပါတယ္၊ ဒါေမမယ့္ မွတ္ပုံတင္ စစ္ၿပီး သူတို႔က ေရြးတဲ့လူပဲေတြ႔ ခြင့္ရတယ္”ဟု ေဒသခံ တဦးက ဆိုသည္။

ဦးတင္ေအာင္ျမင့္ဦးႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆုံခဲ့သည့္ ေဒသခံမ်ားသည္ ေဒသခံ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက ေျပာဆိုခိုင္းသည့္ အတိုင္း ေျပာဆို တင္ျပ ခဲ့သူမ်ား ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ေဒသခံအားလုံး၏ သေဘာထားမ်ားကို ေျပာဆိုခြင့္ မရျခင္းအေပၚ ေက်နပ္မႈ မရွိၾကေၾကာင္း သိရ သည္။

ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရမည့္ေနရာ၌ အသီးအႏွံစိုက္ပ်ဳိးထားမည္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး ဥယ်ာဥ္၊ ၾကက္၊ ၀က္၊ ဘဲ စသည့္တို႔ကို အဆင္သင့္စီမံေပး သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ေျပာင္းရမည့္ အခ်ိန္အတိက်ကုိမူ မသိရေသးေၾကာင္း ဦးတင္ေမာင္ေဆြက ဆိုသည္။

Dawei Development Association အဖြဲ႔၀င္တဦးက ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ားသည္ မိမိတို႔၏ အခြင့္အေရး၊ ဆႏၵ သေဘာထားမ်ားကို ေျပာဆိုရန္ ေၾကာက္ရြံ႕ေနၾကျခင္း၊ အသိပညာ အားနည္းျခင္း စသည္ တို႔အတြက္ အသိပညာေပးမႈမ်ား လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားမည္ဟု ေျပာသည္။အဖြ

ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရမည့္ ေနအိမ္မ်ားကို ဓာတ္ပုံ႐ုိက္ မွတ္တမ္းတင္ေနၿပီး ေနအိမ္အသစ္ ေဆာက္လုပ္ခြင့္ကို တားျမစ္ထားသည္ ဟု သိရသည္။

ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၌ အလုပ္လုပ္ေနသည့္ ေဒသခံ တခ်ဳိ႕သည္ ၎တို႔၏ ေနအိမ္မ်ားအား ဖ်က္သိမ္းထားခဲ့ၿပီး ၿခံကုိသာ ထားခဲ့ေလ့ ရွိေၾကာင္း၊ ၎တို႔ ျပန္လာပါက ေနထိုင္စရာ အိမ္ၿခံမရွိေတာ့၍ ဒုကၡေရာက္ၾကရဦးမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံ သံဃာေတာ္ တပါးက ဧရာ၀တီ ကို မိန္႔ၾကားသည္။

“တခ်ဳိ႕အိမ္ေတြက အခိုင္ႀကီး မဟုတ္ေတာ့ ေဆြးသြားမွာ စိုးရိမ္လို႔ ၿဖိဳဖ်က္ ထားခဲ့ၾကတယ္၊ အခု ရြာေတြေျပာင္းေတာ့ အစား
ထိုး ေနအိမ္ျပန္မရဘူး၊ ၿခံေလ်ာ္ေၾကးကလည္းပဲ နည္းနည္းပဲ ေပးေတာ့ ရြာသားေတြ နစ္နာၾကတယ္”ဟု ထိုသံဃာေတာ္ က ဆက္လက္ မိန္႔သည္။

ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရမည့္ေက်းရြာ မ်ားမွာ ေရျဖဴႏွင့္ ေလာင္းလုံၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္းမွ ပုေဂါ ဇြန္း၊ သေျပဇြန္း၊ က်ခတၱ၊ ပင္အင္း၊ ေဒါင္းေရွာင္၊ ေက်ာက္ေထာက္၊ နတ္တြင္း၊ မယင္းႀကီး၊ လဲေရွာင္၊ ေညာင္ပင္ဆိပ္၊ ပိတက္၊ ပိန္းေရွာင္၊ ေက်ာက္၀ွက္ကုန္း၊ မူးဒူး၊ မသ ဒတ္၊ ထိန္ႀကီး၊ မင္းဒပ္ စသည္တို႔ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ သည္ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္းႏွင့္အတူတြဲလ်က္ တည္ေဆာက္ေနျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ထား၀ယ္ေရ နက္ ဆိပ္ကမ္းစီမံကိန္းသည္ စတုရန္းမိုင္ ၁၀၀ ခန္႔ရွိေၾကာင္း စီမံကိန္းေဆာက္လုပ္ခြင့္ရ Italian-Thai Development ကုမၸဏီ မွတ္တမ္းမ်ားအရ သိရသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ ၂၀၁၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ ႏို၀င္ဘာ ၂ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ျမန္မာ အာဏာ ပိုင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ကုမၸဏီတို႔ သေဘာတူ လက္မွတ္ ေရးထိုးခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

Dam to destroy Karen villages

2012-01-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

Karen people in Theyetchaung Township, Tavoy, in southern Burma, claim they will be forcibly evicted from their homes by government authorities to make way for the construction of a dam.

Htee Ler Klay (also known as Da Thway Kyauk) villagers say that on November 18, 2011, a Burmese construction company named, Tha Ba Wa Shwa Ain Lain and its senior staff, including the a director, U Kaw Yaw, and the manager U Maung Sein came into their village to start building a dam on the Te Ler Klay River.

Saw Eh Ler, a resident from Htee Ler Klay village, told Karen News.

“The villages of Htee Ler Klay, Nya Pya, Su Lor and Nyaw Klaw will soon be under water and the villagers will be forced to be relocated.”

Most of the local villagers are either Karen or from the indigenous Tavoyan people.

Naw Paw Lay Lay, a villager affected by the dam construction spoke to Karen News.

“The company people didn’t consult with us about the construction of this dam. We saw them bring in their machinery and start constructing and destroying our plantations and betel nut trees – our only source of income.”

Villager Naw Paw Lay Lay says the local people do not want a dam.

“We don’t want our village to be destroyed, we oppose this project. If we cannot oppose it, at least we should be compensated and paid a fair price for the destruction of our land and plantations. We don’t want the dam to be built.”

Saw Eh Ler said it would be difficult for villagers to restart their lives from scratch.

“Our entire community will be destroyed by this dam. We will have to start our lives from the beginning. It will be very difficult for all of us. The dam will give all of us a big problem. The [Burma] government and the company are working together, so it is difficult for us to oppose it. We urge non-government groups to hear our voice and come see how bad the situation we are in.”

Thai PM for Chennai-Dawei corridor

2012-01-26T20:19:00.000-08:00

The sleepy little town of Dawei, earlier known as Tavoy, in southern Myanmar is certainly not a familiar name in India. But if the young Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has her way, it could well become the hub of India’s long-sought transport corridor to Southeast Asia.

In her address to the business associations in New Delhi on Wednesday, Shinawatra talked about her government’s commitment to transform the connectivity in Southeast Asia by building a deep sea port and a massive industrial complex at Dawei.

Estimated to cost more than $50 billion and to be implemented in multiple phases, the Dawei project is being touted as the biggest infrastructure project ever in Southeast Asia.

Once translated into reality, the Dawei complex will put the recent Chinese port development in Gwadar (Pakistan) and Hambantota (Sri Lanka) and Kyauk Phyu (Myanmar) into shade.

Unlike the Chinese ports, which are surrounded by underdeveloped hinterlands, Shinawatra’s proposal for the Chennai-Dawei corridor will connect economically robust regions. As the crow flies from Chennai, Dawei is directly across on the other side of the Bay of Bengal.

The Dawei development project also came up for discussion in Delhi this week in the talks with the visiting foreign minister of Myanmar, U Maung Lwin.

More than a decade ago, India, Myanmar and Thailand had outlined a triangular initiative to develop overland road networks linking the three countries. Shinawatra wants to revive that moribund project.

The Chennai-Dawei corridor, however, is much simpler in its conception and will connect India’s emerging industrial hubs in southern India with the heart of continental Southeast Asia, China and other thriving East Asian markets.

Thailand has plans to develop transport corridors that will link Dawei to Southern China, Vietnam’s coastline in South China Sea and the waters of Cambodia through the land-locked Laos.

The narrow peninsula, where the territories of Myanmar, Thailand and Malyasia meet, has been the barrier separating the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The bustling trade between the two oceans today has to circumnavigate the peninsula through the crowded Straits of Malacca.

Finding a shorter route between the two oceans by cutting through the peninsula has long stirred the imagination of sovereigns and sailors in the region. The Thai project is probably closest to the realisation of that dream.

Thai companies promoting the project have already won support from counterparts in China and Japan.

China, which is developing many transport corridors in Southeast Asia, is happy to invest in yet another network. It has plans to build a large free trade centre in Bangkok, from where it plans to boost trade with the Indian Ocean region.

Japan, conscious of its declining influence, is stepping up its diplomatic activism in Southeast Asia and strongly backing its integration with India and South Asia.

Delhi, which long remained apart from the recent spectacular infrastructure development in the Indian Ocean littoral, now has a welcome opportunity to partake in the physical and economic integration of the region.

‘No place for dirty coal in Burma’: activists

2012-01-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

Environmental activists in Burma have sought to capitalise on a recent decision by the government to suspend a massive coal-fired power plant in the country’s south by demanding a moratorium on all existing and planned coal projects.

The 4,000 MW plant in Tavoy would have produced enough power to support construction of a 200 square-kilometre industrial complex and buoy neighbouring Thailand’s energy needs. But after widespread grassroots opposition at the likely environmental and health impacts of the project, the government in early January scrapped the plan.

A joint statement from the Pa-Oh Youth Organisation (PYO) and the Shan Sapawa Environmental Organisation said that at the very least, thorough environmental impact assessments (IEAs) should be carried out prior to energy projects moving forward.

The groups pointed to the example of the Tigyit coal mine and power plant in Shan state, which despite generating only 120 MW of power, is affecting up to 12,000 people living nearby. A report compiled by PYO last year said that the plant was pumping more than 100 tonnes of toxic fly ash per day into the air and polluting nearby waterways.

The Tavoy plant however would have dwarfed Tigyit, and in keeping with other energy projects in Burma, the overwhelming bulk of output would have been sold abroad, rather than feeding energy-starved Burma.

Anti-Tavoy campaigners however are operating on risky terrain: earlier this week government officials warned the Dawei (Tavoy) Regional Development Group, which has been rallying locals to protest against the project that could displace up to 30,000 people, to keep quiet.

“They told us not to say things such as ‘there’s no need for locals to move’ or do other unnecessary things, and just to cooperate [with authorities],” a member of the group told DVB.

The future of the Tavoy plant however remains in doubt. It was initially thought that the lead company in the project, Ital-Thai, would urge the Burmese government to allow it to go ahead with a 400 MW plant that would power construction of the industrial complex, which is set to be Southeast Asia’s largest.

Some reports even suggested that the company would gauge the possibility of constructing an alternative plant, possibly natural gas or hydrocarbon. A decision on this is due to be made within three months.

The project, which will eventually run to around $US50 billion, is key to regional economies hungry for greater trade with the west. A major highway running from Kanchanaburi in Thailand to Tavoy will connect with a deep-sea port on Burma’s Andaman Sea coastline, which is being built to accommodate around 55 vessels laden with cargo at any one time.

In addition the site will house petrochemical refineries, steel mills and plastics factories, dramatically changing the sleepy fishing town of Tavoy into a crucial hub for Burmese and Southeast Asian industry.

Dawei energy project moving forward

2012-01-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

Italian-Thai Development Plc. (ITD), the developer of the Dawei deep-sea port project on the southern coast of Burma, needs to secure around US$ 8.5 billion to move ahead on the infrastructure phase of the massive mega-billion project.

Thailand's largest construction company by market value, ITD will require the backing of Thailand, Burma and a blend of international partners, Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei Development Co (DDC), told The Bangkok Post on Monday.

The local Burmese investor Max Myanmar has agreed to acquire 25 percent of DDC, which ITD had set up to manage the Dawei project. The Thai contractor has said it will maintain at least a 51% stake in DDC, while other partners are welcome, he told the newspaper.

ITD has been granted a 75-year concession for the energy project that will cover 250 square kilometers. Located on the Andaman shoreline, Dawei is about 350 kilometers west of Bangkok. The project will supply oil and other goods to Southeast Asia, bypassing the Strait of Malacca and cutting costs.

The Dawei Special Economic Zone includes an integrated steel mill, power plants, a petrochemical complex and a fertilizer plant. Separate entities will be set up to invest in each project, Somchet said.

“China, Japan and South Korea are the key strategic partners of our projects,” he said. “Finding a balance for each of these groups is important. For example, if we have a lot of Chinese partners, the U.S. might not be happy with that.”

Somchet told the Post that the Thai and Burmese governments would provide support in four areas for the Dawei project.

– First is physical infrastructure such as roads in Thailand to link with Burma roads.

– Second is simplifying border procedures between the two countries under the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2015.

–Third is financial transactions such as money exchange between the two countries.

– Fourth is enhancing competitiveness of Thai and Burmese businesses in cross-border investment.

He said Burmese authorities have yet to issue ITD a notice that Dawei's planned coal-fired power plants had been halted after environmental protests, as reported by various media on January 9 after remarks by Burmese officials.

Somchet told Reuters news agency that its power plant partner, Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Pcl, would decide on fuel type within three months, including the possibility of using natural gas funneled to the site on a 50- kilometre (31 mile) pipeline from fields in Burma.

ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုံ စီမံကိန္းမွာ ျပည္ပ အစုရွယ္ယာရွင္ေတြလုိ

2012-01-24T07:25:00.000-08:00

ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုံ စီမံကိန္း ရင္းႏွီးျမဳပ္ႏွံမႈမွာ ျမန္မာနဲ ့ထုိင္း အစိုးရအျပင္ ျပည္ပ အစုရွယ္ယာရွင္ေတြပါ ဟန္ခ်က္ညီညီ ပါ၀င္ဖို႔ လိုအပ္တယ္လို႔ စီမံကိန္း အေကာင္ အထည္ေဖာ္မယ့္ ITD အီတာလ်ံ-ထုိင္း ကုမၸဏီ ထိပ္တန္း အရာရွိတစ္ဦးက ေျပာလိုက္ပါတယ္။

ဒီစီမံကိန္းအတြက္ လိုအပ္တဲ့ရန္ပုံေငြကို ေခ်းေငြ၊ အစုရွယ္ယာ ထည့္၀င္မႈနဲ႔ ဖက္စပ္လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ေတြ အေပၚ မူတည္ၿပီး ရွာေဖြမယ္လုိ ့ DDC ထား၀ယ္ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရးကုမၸဏီ ညႊန္ၾကားေရးမွဴးက ဆိုပါတယ္။ တ႐ုတ္ ဂ်ပန္ ေတာင္ကိုးရီးယား တုိ႔ကို ျပည္ပက ဖက္စပ္ လုပ္ကိုင္မယ့္ အစုရွယ္ယာရွင္ေတြ အျဖစ္ ဖိတ္ေခၚေပမယ့္ ဟန္ခ်က္ညီညီ ပါ၀င္ဖုိ ့အေရးႀကီးတယ္လို႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။

ဒီစီမံကိန္းအတြက္ ITD အေနနဲ ့ ၅၁ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း ထည့္၀င္ကာ စီမံကိန္းကို ဦးေဆာင္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ၿပီး Max Myanmar ကုမၸဏီက ၂၅ ရာခိုင္ႏႈန္း ထည့့္၀င္မယ္လို႔ ဘန္ေကာက္ပို႔စ္ သတင္းစာက ဆိုပါတယ္။ ထား၀ယ္ အထူး စီးပြားေရးဇုံ စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ အေမရိကန္ ေဒၚလာ ဘီလ်ံ ၅၀ လိုအပ္တယ္လို႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာအစိုးရက ITD ကို ဒီစီမံကိန္းအတြက္ ေျမဧရိယာ ၂၅၀ ကီလိုမီတာ ပတ္လည္မွာ လုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္ ၇၅ ႏွစ္ ခြင့္ျပဳခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ထား၀ယ္စီမံကိန္းမွာ အေ၀းေျပးလမ္းမေတြ၊ သံမဏိစက္ရုံ၊ လွ်ပ္စစ္ ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ုံ၊ သေဘၤာက်င္း၊ စကၠဴနဲ႔ ေပ်ာ့ဖတ္စက္႐ုံ၊ ေရနံသန္႔စင္စက္႐ုံအျပင္ ေဂါက္ကြင္းနဲ႔ ဟိုတယ္ေတြ ပါ၀င္မယ္လုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။

Thai Govt Will Not Meddle in Dawei Dispute

2012-01-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

Fishing boats are seen against the setting sun on Maungmagan Beach near the town of Dawei in southern Burma in November. (Photo: Reuters)

The Thai government and key investors are backing the Dawei (Tavoy) harbor and economic zone project despite Naypyidaw's recent cancellation of a 4,000MW coal-fired power station there and the Karen National Union (KNU) stalling a linking highway.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy at a Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) forum in Bangkok, Kittirat Na Ranong, Thailand's deputy prime minister—who was appointed finance minister in Thursday's cabinet reshuffle—said that he remained hopeful that the US $58 billion project will proceed. However, he added, “Thailand will never interfere with any other country for the benefit of any business group.”

According to Thai media reports earlier in January, Italian-Thai Development (ITD)—the industrial giant which won the contract to develop Dawei—was caught unaware by the government announcement.

On Jan. 9, Burma's Electricity Minister Khin Maung Soe announced that a planned 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant, which would supply electricity to the port and surrounding area, would not be built.

“We [the government] listened to the media, and studied the impact of a coal-fire power plant. After reading [the reports], we said it is not appropriate to have a coal-fire power plant. We decided to cancel the 4,000-megawatt coal-fire power plant,” said the minister at the time.

In an email, an ITD spokesperson said that the company “has not received an official report from the Myanmar government to halt the power plant construction in Dawei.” But ITD noted that “the Myanmar government has ranked natural gas, alternative energy and coal to be the priority for the source of fuel to generate electricity,” and that it “will take such details into account in order to develop the power plant construction in the Dawei industrial estate.”

Environmental groups in the nearby area have campaigned against the project, seeking some modifications. Paul Sein Twa of the Burma Environmental Working Group (BEWG) welcomed the cancellation of the coal plant, but added “the overall project needs a proper environmental impact assessment and social impact assessment before it should proceed.”

These remarks have been echoed by the KNU—an ethnic rebel group operating near Dawei—which has forced the suspension of construction of a highway linking Dawei to Kanchanaburi in Thailand, according to sources inside Burma.

ITD and the KNU are currently negotiating a solution to the dispute, say both sides, a prospect perhaps made more likely by the recent inking of a ceasefire deal between the KNU and Burmese government. Contradicting claims of a stand-off, an ITD spokesperson told The Irrawaddy that “the road construction has proceeded very well and the accessibility is almost completed.”

Siam Cement is one of the big-player Thai companies interested in the Dawei project. Speaking to The Irrawaddy, CEO and President Kan Trakhulhoon said that “we are still committed to it, if they can provide natural gas then that is OK,” referring to the possible replacement of the canceled coal-fired pant with a gas-fueled alternative.

However, despite Burma's offshore gas fields, there is not yet a pipeline linking them to Dawei, making it unclear to potential investors, such as Thailand PTT, if the gas option is feasible. PTT had not replied to emails about the issue at the time of publication.

Despite the sanguine noises from investors, some analysts say that the project remains fraught with challenges. In a research note published last week, DBS Vickers Securities assessed that “Despite potential to bring economic prosperity to Burma, the project is still in its infancy and clouded with risks. In our view, ITD faces a country risk and an unpredictable business climate. The sudden call to halt the 4,000MW coal-fired power plant project would make it difficult for ITD to secure strategic partners to help fund the project.”

However, Thai and other investors remain interested in the Dawei project, with Japan's trade and economy minister Yukio Edano discussing it with both the Burmese and Thai governments when he visited the countries in mid-January. Dr. Virabongsa Ramangkura, chairman of Thailand's Strategic Committee for Reconstruction and Future Development, told the BOI forum that “in meetings with Japan, the Dawei project came up constantly”.

Rush to reform Myanmar creates ‘Burma burn-out’

2012-01-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

As Myanmar’s rapid reform programme propels it from pariah to emerging market status, a new phrase has cropped up in conversations in tea shops in the city of Yangon: “Burma burn-out”.

The phrase is used, only half-jokingly, by diplomats and expatriates to describe how the recent explosion of reformist fervour is stretching the government’s painfully limited capabilities almost beyond breaking point. But there is a more serious point – a growing concern that Myanmar’s reformers might not be able to do everything they want to do or that the international community is demanding of them.

Not long ago, a single regulatory reform might have taken a year or more to implement in Myanmar, previously known as Burma. Now, a new policy can emerge in a matter of days. “This is a government in a hurry and it wants everything done yesterday,” said a Yangon-based diplomat.

Judging by official communications, Myanmar’s bureaucrats appear to be working seven days a week. Emails come at odd times of day and night. Announcements can emerge at dawn. Government meetings take place even at midnight.

“There is indeed a danger that people will burn out. That’s why they need help,” said David Lipman, the European Union’s ambassador to Myanmar. “This is a government crying out for help in capacity-building, at every level . . . they want to do so many things. The real problem is implementation.”

A long-time expat businessman explains how a “tiny handful” of people are trying to make enormous changes on all fronts. “There are probably no more than 20 to 30 competent people in this government who can do this stuff – and they’re definitely not getting any sleep. They’re trying to negotiate with ethnic rebels, draw up everything from land reform to financial regulation and liaise with western organisations – while fighting a rearguard action from people who benefited from the status quo.”

Indeed, says an American aid worker, “there are a few who know how to run things and then there’s the rest, who’ve never been trained in anything, who sit around waiting for orders, who have come up in a bureaucratic dictatorship system where initiative is punished, not rewarded. And that’s the system supposedly overseeing this incredible change.”

Myanmar clearly lacks the institutions needed to support and deepen the democratisation process and implement planned reforms, warns Susanne Kempel, a European aid consultant. “Decades of neglect of the public sector, a poor education system and inadequate training of civil servants [have] created a void in capacity – which might just be the biggest obstacle to reform in the country.”

The crisis in capacity is not just confined to the bureaucracy. From diplomats and business executives to aid workers and tourism industry representatives, all involved in Myanmar’s push to open up risk “burn-out syndrome”. Hotels are running at near 100 per cent occupancy, aid organisations – multilateral and non-governmental – are coming to seek potential projects and business people are flooding in to assess opportunities.

It is what Phil Robertson, who has worked on Myanmar issues for two decades and now heads Human Rights Watch in Thailand, calls the “ultimate gold rush”.

“We’re not just talking about the Burmese. This is the moment when diplomats can make their name, when aid groups can set up and have big input; it’s the place where careers are going to be made – it’s a fantastic opportunity for anyone with capacity or ability to be on the front line; if you’re a local NGO with any track record, every donor in the world is going to be banging on your door with money; if you have a couple of old houses, you can fix them up and rent to foreigners. And if you’re Burmese and in business, you’re looking like a potential joint venture partner for foreign companies.”

On a policy level, the government may be trying to do too much, too fast, say diplomats. Many warn that the hectic pace is resulting in flawed policies, draft legislation riddled with loopholes and ad hoc decisions.

One example is the government’s abrupt cancellation of mega-projects, including the decision last September to suspend a $3.6bn Chinese dam project at Myitsone in the north, and the recent move to cancel a Thai, coal-fired power plant at Dawei in the south-east.
While such decisions may reflect a new desire to “listen to the people’s voices”, as President Thein Sein has said, there has been no explanation or consultation with the companies concerned.

Another concern is new legislation, for example, proposed laws to reform land use. These were “written in haste and without proper consultation with key stakeholders including land experts, and fail to provide adequate guarantees for millions of small farmers”, says a consultant to international NGOs.

“So many momentous things are happening there’s no room to pause,” says one young western diplomat. “You have to grab the moment; the trouble is, people are going to burn out”.

Dawei developer seeks more funding, partners

2012-01-23T03:17:00.000-08:00

ITD casts net to haul in US$8bn over 3 years

Support from the governments of both Thailand and Myanmar, as well as a balance of foreign partners, is critical for pushing ahead with the capital-intensive Dawei project, says Italian-Thai Development Plc.

ITD, Thailand's largest construction company by market value, needs as much as US$8 billion (252 billion baht) over the next three years to develop infrastructure such as roads, railways, a port, a telecom network and utilities in Dawei, on the southwestern coast of Myanmar.

"The funds will be raised in the form of equity, loans and strategic partners," said Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei Development Co (DDC).

The local investor Max Myanmar has agreed to acquire 25% of DDC, which ITD had set up to manage the Dawei project. The Thai contractor has said it will maintain at least a 51% stake in DDC, while other partners are welcome.

ITD has been granted a 75-year concession for the special economic zone in Dawei that covers 250 square kilometres, 10 times bigger than the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate in Rayong.

Located on the Andaman shoreline, Dawei is about 350 kilometres west of Bangkok.

Apart from infrastructure, the Dawei Special Economic Zone will comprise an integrated steel mill, power plants, a petrochemical complex and a fertiliser plant. Separate entities will be set up to invest in each of these projects.

"China, Japan and South Korea are the key strategic partners of our projects," Dr Somchet said. "Finding a balance for each of these groups is important. For example, if we have a lot of Chinese partners, the US might not be happy with that."

The US has made clear that it wants to restore full diplomatic relations with Myanmar after last month's visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Japan's minister of economy, trade and industry also paid a visit last week.

Dr Somchet said the Thai and Myanmar governments had been called on to provide support in four areas for the Dawei project.

First is physical infrastructure such as roads in Thailand to link transport routes with Myanmar.

Second is institutional infrastructure required for the Dawei project, such as simplifying border connections between the two countries under the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2015.

Third is financial facilitation for transactions such as money exchange between the two countries.

Fourth is enhancing competitiveness of Thai and Myanmar businesses in terms of cross-border investment.

"All of these factors will make Dawei globally competitive in the eyes of foreign investors by serving as a linkage to the rest of the Greater Mekong Southern Economic Corridor," Dr Somchet said.

As for Dawei's planned coal-fired power plants, which reportedly have been halted after an outcry over the project's environmental impact, he insisted that the company has yet to be notified about the issue by Myanmar's government.

Shares of ITD closed Friday on the SET at 3.46 baht, up 2 satang, in trade worth 56.6 million baht.

Dawei deep seaport - Kom Chad Luek

2012-01-23T01:54:00.000-08:00

All systems go in India

2012-01-23T01:28:00.000-08:00

Concrete progress on long-awaited FTA expected to be highlight of PM Yingluck's visit to New Delhi this week.

Ambassador Anil Wadhwa chats with Thailand Trade Representative
Dr Nalinee Taveesin during her recent visit to India.
Dr Nalinee last week was appointed as a deputy minister to the
Prime Minister’s Office.

India's "Look East" policy will be on full display with the visit of Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra this week, as both sides look to expedite various deals that have been in the pipeline.

"The visit by Prime Minister Yingluck is an important step that will help to push for a wide range of memoranda of understanding and agreements to be undertaken," Anil Wadhwa, the Indian ambassador to Thailand, told the Bangkok Post.

Ms Yingluck will be the chief guest _ only one foreign dignitary is chosen each year _ at the country's Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi on Jan 26. The lavish event is broadcast live on most Indian television stations and comes on the final day of the premier's three-day visit.

Topping both countries' to-do list will be setting an agenda to complete the years-old process of sealing a comprehensive free trade agreement.

"Thailand is an important country to India, and that is one of the reasons why the government of India decided to invite Ms Yingluck," said Mr Wadhwa.

The ambassador said other agreements were also likely to be announced. He declined to elaborate but said two potential pacts would deal with extradition and prisoner exchanges.

Other issues being discussed include a mutual legal assistance treaty, which has been enforced in criminal matters but needs to be adapted for economic cases.

The countries have also agreed on an agreement to end double taxation, which would require parliamentary approvals before being signed formally.

Still, it is the FTA that is seen as the centrepiece of the premier's visit, given that talks have gone on for more than seven years.

"The target is to complete the FTA by June or July this year," said Mr Wadhwa.

The envoy offered assurances that there would be no more delays as in the past, due either to political upheaval in Thailand or contentious issues on rules of origin or other issues.

The two countries have had an early harvest programme that reduced tariffs on 84 items, and the FTA is likely to push the list of items to well past 1,000, which would likely give Thailand a larger surplus. Currently Thailand enjoys a major surplus from the 84 items on the early harvest list.

"We are not concerned about the surplus because India is a growing economy and it needs to import raw materials to feed into its manufacturing industries," Mr Wadhwa said.

The early harvest has helped bring two-way trade to a record high last year and the target for 2012 of $10 billion seems "conservative", according to Mr Wadhwa.

"For the nine months (to Sept 30), two-way trade was $7 billion which was a 28% increase year-on-year and the target for 2011 was set at $8 billion, which we are confident we will cross as we can do another $2 billion in the last two months of the year," he said.

He added that the $10-billion figure set for 2012 did not factor in the possibility of the FTA being signed, in which case the value could be even greater.

"It usually takes two to three months after an FTA is signed for the effects to trickle through," he said. If a signing takes place in June or July, benefits could be seen in the fourth quarter.

The aim is to make business as seamless as possible for both sides and although some restrictions may remain, the opening up of the Indian economy to Thai businesses is likely to be beneficial.

The Indian economy is very much domestic consumption-based, which might give the country a slight advantage over giant rival China in the short term. With the slowdown in the United States and European Union, which account for about 23% and 22% respectively of overall exports from China, the likelihood of the Chinese economy slowing down is high.

The Indian government, Mr Wadhwa says, is also willing to support Thailand's efforts to help create a huge industrial complex at Dawei in Myanmar.

Italian Thai Development Plc (ITD) is the lead player in this massive project, holding a 75-year concession for 160,000 rai in the port city.

ITD, Thailand's largest contractor and also one of the larger construction companies operating in India, has said that it plans to secure at least US$12.5 billion worth of loans this year to develop key infrastructure for Dawei.

Of the $12.5 billion, about $3.5 billion will be for port and road construction, $2 billion for a rail project and $7 billion for power plants with combined capacity of 4,000 megawatts.

However, the Myanmar government declared recently that it would not allow coal-fired power plants on environmental grounds, so the power plants will require a rethink.

Under the master plan, a deep-sea port will be developed on 6,100 rai, power plants will take up 2,300 rai, 13,750 rai will go to an integrated steel mill, 8,700 rai for oil and gas projects, 17,220 rai for a petrochemical complex, and 2,400 rai for a fertiliser plant.

"Indian companies are interested in this project as well," said Mr Wadhwa. "There are a range of clusters that are going to be developed in Dawei and India has its strength in the steel, petrochemical and other sectors.

"Even the government of Myanmar has asked us to join this project and therefore we can do it jointly [with Thai interests]. If we can match our strengths then we would be a formidable competitor to anyone."

ထား၀ယ္လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံုကို သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ျဖင့္ လည္ပတ္ႏိုင္ရန္ ညႇိႏႈိင္းမည္ဟု အီတာလ်ံ ထိုင္းကုမၸဏီေျပာ

2012-01-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူး စီးပြားေရးဇုန္တြင္ တည္ေဆာက္ရန္ စီစဥ္ထားသည့္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဓာတ္အား ေပးစက္႐ံု စီမံကိန္းကို ရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္ ျမန္မာ အစိုးရဘက္မွ ဆံုးျဖတ္လိုက္ျခင္းေၾကာင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ျဖင့္ စက္႐ံုကို လည္ပတ္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရႏွင့္ ျပန္လည္ညႇိႏိႈင္းသြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ထုိင္းႏိုင္ငံ အီတာလ်ံထိုင္းကုမၸဏီမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူတစ္ဦးက ဘန္ေကာက္ၿမိဳ႕ တြင္ ေျပာၾကားသည္။

မဂၢါ၀ပ္ ၄,၀၀၀ ထုတ္လုပ္ႏိုင္သည့္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အား ေပးစက္႐ံုကုိ တည္ေဆာက္ေတာ့မည္ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း အမွတ္(၂) လွ်ပ္စစ္ စြမ္းအား၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ျပည္ေထာင္စု ၀န္ႀကီး ဦးခင္ေမာင္စိုးက ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၉ ရက္ေန႔က ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ သတင္း ေထာက္မ်ားကို ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။

သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ထိခိုက္ႏိုင္မည္ကို စိုးရိမ္သည့္အတြက္ ယင္း ေက်ာက္ မီးေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံုကို တည္ေဆာက္မည္မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း ၎က ေျပာသည္။

"ဒီဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ သိပ္ေတာ့ မအံ့ဩမိပါဘူး"ဟု ထား၀ယ္ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈ ကုမၸဏီ၏ မန္ေနဂ်င္းဒါ႐ိုက္တာျဖစ္သူ ဆြမ္ခ်က္သီ နာေပါင္းက ေျပာသည္။

အဆုိပါ ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံုတည္ ေဆာက္မည့္ စီမံကိန္းကုိ ကန္႔ကြက္ဆႏၵ ျပမႈတစ္ခုကို ထား၀ယ္ေဒသခံမ်ားက ယခုလ အေစာ ပိုင္းက ေမာင္းမကန္ ကမ္းေျခတြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။

စက္႐ံုေၾကာင့္ ေဒသတြင္းပတ္၀န္း က်င္ညစ္ညမ္းၿပီး ေဒသခံမ်ားအေပၚ ထိခိုက္နစ္နာမႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚလာႏိုင္သည့္ အတြက္ ထုိကဲ့သို႔ ဆႏၵျပျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း Green Development လႈပ္ရွားမႈဟု အမည္ေပးထားသည့္ ၎လႈပ္ရွားမႈတြင္ ပါ၀င္သူမ်ားက ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ထိုကဲ့သို႔ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံု မတည္ေဆာက္ ေတာ့သည့္အတြက္ ယင္းေဒသတြင္ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အား ရရွိရန္ ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ျဖင့္ ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ မဟာဓာတ္အားလိုင္းကိုလည္း ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္အထိ ဆက္သြယ္မႈျပဳႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ဦးခင္ေမာင္စိုး က ေျပာသည္။

ျမန္မာအစိုးရ၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္အရ စက္႐ံုတြင္ အသံုးျပဳရမည့္ေလာင္စာကို ျပင္ဆင္ရမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ မူလက ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးျဖင့္ စက္႐ံုလည္ပတ္ရန္ စီစဥ္ထားျခင္းမွ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ျဖင့္ ေျပာင္းလဲလည္ပတ္ရမည္ဆိုပါက စက္႐ံု တည္ေဆာက္မည့္ ရက္ခ်ာ ဘူရီကုမၸဏီ အေနျဖင့္ ကုန္က်စရိတ္ျပန္လည္တြက္ ခ်က္ရမည္ဟု ၎က ေျပာသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈကုမၸဏီသည္ ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ႏွင့္ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ အီတာလ်ံထိုင္းကုမၸဏီ၏ လုပ္ငန္းခြဲ တစ္ခုျဖစ္သည္။

၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္၊ ႏို၀င္ဘာလအတြင္းက မဂၢါ၀ပ္ ၄ယ၀၀၀ ထြက္ရွိမည့္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံု တည္ ေဆာက္ရန္ ရက္ခ်ာဘူရီ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္ အားကုမၸဏီႏွင့္ သေဘာတူထားခဲ့ၿပီး ျမန္မာအစိုးရ၏ ယခုဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္သည္ အဆိုပါ သေဘာတူညီမႈကို ထိခိုက္ျခင္း မရွိဟု ဆြမ္ခ်က္က ေျပာသည္။

စက္႐ံုအတြက္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ကုိ ေျပာင္းလဲအသံုးျပဳရန္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သြား မည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး ထိုသုိ႔ေျပာင္းလဲျခင္းအတြက္ စီမံကိန္း အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္မည့္ အခ်ိန္ကို မည္သုိ႔ အေျပာင္းအလဲျဖစ္ေစမည္ကို မသိရွိႏိုင္ေသးဟု ၎က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ထား၀ယ္စီမံကိန္းတြင္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၏ အႀကီးဆံုးစြမ္းအင္ကုမၸဏီႀကီးျဖစ္သည့္ PTT ကလည္း ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံု တည္ေဆာက္ သြားရန္ စီစဥ္ေနၿပီး အဓိ ကျပႆနာမွာ ထိုေဒသသို႔ သြယ္တန္း ထားေသာ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႕ပိုက္လိုင္း မရွိေသးျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ဟု သိရသည္။

"ကြ်န္ေတာ္တုိ႔အေနနဲ႔ ျမန္မာအစိုးရဘက္က အခ်က္ျပမႈကို ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ရပါမယ္"ဟု PTT ၏အမႈေဆာင္အရာရွိခ်ဳပ္ျဖစ္သူ Pailin Chucho-ttarworn က ဘန္ေကာက္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ သတင္းေထာက္မ်ားအား ေျပာသည္။

Myanmar Buoyed by $8.6 Billion Port as Sanctions Abate: Freight

2012-01-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Myanmar is developing an $8.6 billion port and industrial complex in the nation’s south intended to feed Asian demand as the U.S. and Europe lay out a path to ease sanctions in place for more than 20 years.

Italian-Thai Development Co., the largest construction company in Thailand, completed an access road last year from the Thai border to Dawei, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Bangkok. The company plans to complete financing this year for the harbor, which with the industrial zone will cover an area 16 times bigger than Thailand’s largest manufacturing park.

“What makes Dawei interesting is Myanmar itself,” said Thanet Sorat, who heads a trade facilitation body at the Federation of Thai Industries, the country’s biggest industry group. “It was closed for so long and now the government is more open. Thai companies see many opportunities there due to cheap labor costs and many natural resources.”

The Dawei initiative highlights Myanmar’s efforts to connect one of Asia’s poorest nations to a region driving global growth. Myanmar has freed political prisoners and signed a peace agreement with rebels, seeking to prompt the U.S. and the European Union to lift economic sanctions.

Italian-Thai shares, which fell 22 percent last year, are poised to recover as the Dawei project advances, Athaporn Arayasantiparb, an analyst with UOB-Kay Hian Securities (Thailand) Pcl, wrote in a report yesterday. PTT Pcl, PTT Exploration & Production Pcl, Hemaraj Land & Development Pcl and Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Pcl are among other listed Thai companies set to benefit, he said.

‘Opening Up’

Siam Cement Pcl, Thailand’s fifth-biggest company by market value, also probably will gain assuming the project proceeds as planned, said Adithep Vanabriksha, who oversees about $4.5 billion of Thai assets for Aberdeen Asset Management.

“Myanmar’s on the verge of opening up and Thai companies are likely to benefit given our proximity,” said Bangkok-based Adithep. “They’re going to need a lot of construction materials, a lot of cement.”

Myanmar President Thein Sein discussed the Dawei project at a December meeting with Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who sent several cabinet ministers to inspect the site on Jan. 7. Bangkok-based Italian-Thai signed a 60-year concession to develop Dawei 14 months ago.

Industrial Hub?

Executives from Bangkok Bank Pcl, Krung Thai Bank Pcl and Siam Commercial Bank Pcl joined the ministers on the visit to Dawei this month, according to Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of the Dawei Development Co., an Italian-Thai unit. Among the potential investors he listed were Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd., known as Petronas, and Japanese companies Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui & Co. and Sumitomo Corp.

“All our experts and all the technical people from Thailand and Myanmar believe Dawei can be a new industrial hub,” Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul, who was on the trip, told reporters on Dec. 21.

Japanese manufacturers are interested in using Dawei to make parts that can supply factories in Thailand, which automakers Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. use as a production base, said Somchet, who is overseeing the project.

Japan will try to help finance the Dawei port if it can reach a deal on the former military dictatorship’s “huge” outstanding debt, Kimihiro Ishikane, a foreign ministry official, told reporters in Bali on Nov. 16. Myanmar is a “crucially important” part of Japan’s plans to try and reduce costs for its companies operating in the region, he said.

ASEAN Landscape

“This is a project that will help change the ASEAN landscape,” Somchet said, referring to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has a market of almost 600 million people. “We are establishing an industrial hub where raw materials will flow” to China, India and Japan.

To be sure, Myanmar has recently put two electricity projects on hold due to opposition from environmentalists. One of them is a 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power project in Dawei that Italian-Thai agreed to build with Ratchaburi. In September, Thein Sein halted construction of a Chinese-backed $3.6 billion hydropower station.

The moves underscored the investment risks stemming from Myanmar’s 14-month-old transition toward democracy, a process on which the lifting of sanctions is conditioned. The country is viewed as the most corrupt after North Korea and Somalia in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

The Dawei project is “still far from reality,” DBS Vickers Securities (Thailand) Co. said in a Jan. 16 report. “Despite potential to bring economic prosperity to Burma, the project is still in its infancy and clouded with risks.”

Steel Mill

Italian-Thai is wooing banks to lend $12.5 billion for the development as well as to invest in an integrated steel mill, an oil, gas and petrochemical complex and fertilizer plants. It expects to gain income from selling land and acting as the main contractor on the project’s infrastructure, including a more than 100-kilometer road from Dawei to the Thai border.

Thein Sein took power last year after a general election in 2010 that ended half of a century of military rule. In addition to releasing hundreds of political prisoners and signing the cease-fire with the country’s largest armed rebel group, he has sought dialogue with democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The U.S. and U.K. have pledged to ease sanctions if he takes additional steps to reduce political repression and demonstrates the changes will last. Standard Chartered Plc and General Electric Co. are among those seeking to invest in Myanmar after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month completed the highest-level U.S. visit to the nation in more than five decades.

‘Strategic Location’

China and India share more than 3,600 kilometers of border with Myanmar, whose 64 million people earn an average of just $2.25 per day, according to International Monetary Fund estimates. Both nations have sought increased access to the resource-rich nation’s reserves of natural gas.

“Myanmar can become a regional hub for some sectors,” Nay Zin Latt, an adviser to Thein Sein, said in an e-mail. “Our strategic location will attract investors. Goods and commodities will move in and out more conveniently with a lower cost, making us more competitive.”

Gas sales and better freight links with China, India and the rest of Southeast Asia may enable Myanmar to boost gross domestic product growth, which IMF data shows averaged 4.9 percent per year during 2008 through 2011.

Gas Rich

Natural gas production in Myanmar has almost quadrupled in the past decade to 12.1 billion cubic meters in 2010. That is equivalent to about one-eighth the output of China, Asia- Pacific’s biggest producer, according to the BP Statistical Review. Gas sales to neighboring Thailand have made it Myanmar’s top trading partner.

“The Dawei port will focus on petrochemicals, not containers,” said Ruth Banomyong, an assistant professor at Bangkok’s Thammasat University who has studied logistics in the region for the Asian Development Bank. “It will be more of an industrial port, with gas and petroleum products.”

Maersk Line Ltd. will look to do more business in Myanmar if the nation opens up to the international community, said Thomas Knudsen, chief executive officer of Asian operations at Maersk Line, a unit of Copenhagen-based A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, the world’s biggest container shipper.

The deep-sea port will be able to handle more than 200 million tons of cargo when completed, according to Italian-Thai. That compares with 47 million tons of cargo that passed through Laem Chabang, Thailand’s biggest port, in 2009, Port Authority statistics show.

“Clearly the port could start to grow,” Maersk’s Knudsen said, referring to Dawei. “We’ve seen that in other parts of the world when you’ve got the combination of a deepwater port and zones for manufacturing.”

By Daniel Ten Kate

Report documents child abuse cases near Dawei economic zone

2012-01-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

More than 150 child soldier and child labour cases have been documented in Yephyu Township, Taninthayi Region, in southern Burma, according to the Human Rights Foundation of Monland.

A photograph showing child labor on a construction project,
according to a human rights group. Photo: HURFOM

From May to October 2011, a total of 179 child abuse cases were found in Ye and Yephyu townships, of which 114 were child labour cases and 52 were child soldier cases, according to a survey. The area is near the Dawei deep-sea port special economic zone.

A report, “Coercion, Cruelty and Collateral Damage,” was released in Mae Sot, on the Burmese-Thai border, on January 13, which will be submitted to the U.N.

“Some children have to guard the gas pipeline, some were recruited to government troops, and some are working on road building projects as either wage workers or as substitutes for their parents,” said Thuta Zin of the Women and Child Rights Project, one of the compilers of the report.

The report also documents children killed and maimed by landmines and victims of sexual abuse. Both Burmese government troops, Karen National Union (KNU) and Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) troops operate in the area.

Foundation director Nai Kasaw Mon said the government should emphasize the eradication of child soldiers and child labour in the territories concerned during cease-fire talks.

“After completing the cease-fire talks, it should work for the elimination of child soldiers and forced labor among children and then they should emphasize help for these children who are behind in education and health due to these conflicts,” Nai Kasaw Mon told Mizzima.

If a genuine cease-fire and peace cannot be built between the Burmese government and ethnic armed groups, the child soldier issue, child labour and other human rights violations will continue to occur, Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB) Director Aung Myo Min said.

Foundation director Nai Kasaw Mon said that their study on six points of child rights outlined in UN Security Council resolution 1612. Burma signed the UN Child Rights Convention in 1991, but the convention is still being violated by both government troops and ethnic armed forces, Nai Kasaw Mon said.

HURFOM will send its report to the Burmese government departments concerned, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), domestic human rights organizations and elected MPs from the constituencies concerned.

TTA seeks plants for coal output

2012-01-19T09:49:00.001-08:00

Thoresen Thai Agencies (TTA), a leading SET-listed dry bulk carrier, is studying a possible investment in coal-fired power plants in Indonesia and the Philippines and a deep-sea port in Myanmar.

With a coal output of 4-5 million tonnes a year, TTA will be ready to operate power plants, said M.L. Chandchutha Chandratat, the president and chief executive.

Under the current plan, TTA plans to produce 3 million tonnes of Indonesian coal and one million tonnes from the Philippines by 2014.

TTA and three partners have been awarded a concession for four coal exploration blocks covering 200,000 rai in Kalimantan, on Borneo.

The company is producing coal from its first mine in the Philippines and looking for a second mine there.

"We are considering investment in power plants near our mines in Indonesia and the Philippines so we don't have to spend a lot on logistics cost," said M.L. Chandchutha.

On Cebu in the Philippines and Borneo in Indonesia, there are large-scale coal-fired power plants in operation, he acknowledged.

Meanwhile, TTA has been invited by Premchai Karnasuta, chairman of Italian-Thai Development Plc, to co-invest in a deep-sea port in Dawei, Myanmar.

Thailand's largest construction firm by market value is seeking partners and mobilising at least US$12.5 billion this year to develop infrastructure on the coast of the neighbouring country.

"I agree there's a lot of potential in Myanmar and we are interested," said M.L. Chandchutha. "However, we need time to study the regulations there, as well as strategic partners who understand this business quite well."

TTA owns a 20% share of Baria Serece, which operates the largest deep-water port in southern Vietnam.

M.L. Chandchutha said TTA plans to dilute its ownership in Unique Mining Services (UMS), a SET-listed coal importer and distributor, from 86% now.

TTA acquired shares and warrants of UMS in late 2009 with a total investment of 3.9 billion baht at 23 baht per share. UMS shares now trade at 13-14 baht.

"We will consider reducing shares when the price improves, and we will still take control of more than 50% in the coal mine subsidiary, as TTA has a plan for long-term investment in energy," said M.L. Chandchutha.

TTA has said that its core shipping business will bottom out this year as the new supply of ships eases from next year onwards.

In 2011, 70 million tonnes of vessels arrived on the market, denoting a 14% increase from the year before.

Supply is expected to rise by 10% or more this year, but the gloomy global economic outlook will continue to pressure the demand side.

"We expect the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) to stay on par with last year's level or even worse," said M.L. Chandchutha.

The BDI, a measure of shipping cost for dry-bulk commodities, just slipped below 1,000 points, compared with last year's low of 1,043.

"Our shipping business might be flat from last year or slightly drop, but it should gradually recover from this quarter onwards," he said.

Next stop: Burma

2012-01-16T03:57:00.000-08:00

Infrastructure developer Dr Somchet Thinaphong says that Burma is opening up, with new mega-projects designed to facilitate trade links in the Asean region

Dr Somchet Thinaphong, managing director of Dawei Development Co Ltd, is spearheading a mega-infrastructure and investment scheme in Burma on behalf of Thailand's Ital-Thai Group.

"We received the concession from the Burmese government about a year ago. Early last year, Burma designated the area, which is as big as 250 square kilometres, on Dawei's seafront, as the Dawei special economic zone.

"It's the first special economic zone in Burma that is ready for foreign direct investment. Regarding the Asean Economic Community, which will be effective in 2015, the zone is in the West, joining the so-called East-West corridor of Asean.

"From the East, it's Vietnam - Quy Nohn City - then Siem Reap and Si Sophon in Cambodia, then Bangkok and Kanchanaburi, Thailand, and Dawei. It's going to be a roadway connection of four countries as well as a link to the South China Sea (Vietnam) and the Andaman Sea (Burma).

"Besides this physical, logistic linkage, Asean Connectivity also means institutional linkages involving financial and banking services, legal systems across borders, as well as harmonisation and liberalisation.

"In terms of value creation, each of the countries involved must also identify their core competencies. If one country is good at designing, it should focus on that. Another country may be good at manufacturing or trading, and so forth. Most importantly, they must be able to support one another across the value chain.

"The key components of the Dawei Development project start with construction of a deep-sea port and related infrastructure, and utilities such as transportation routes and water resources.

"Then, key industries, which are divided into upstream, mid-stream and downstream sectors, namely steel, oil and gas and petrochemicals, plus trading and services such as a free-trade zone and tourism businesses.

"This mega-project requires an overall investment of US$8 billion, or about Bt240 billion for infrastructure and utilities.

"Regarding the Dawei power plant project, the Burmese government has decided to change the source of fuel from coal to other energies such as natural gas and oil (due to opposition by environmental protection groups).

"On politics, I think the world has changed, as people see the potential of Burma, and people want the country to open up. Now, the attitudes of the US government, Japan and China are positive, and they are going there to invest.

"The recent visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma helps (improve the situation there). It meant a lot. The upcoming by-election for Aung San Suu Kyi also signals that Burma is opening up and seeking foreign investment.

"In our Dawei project, we target Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Indian and Asean investors that have the promixity and comparative advantages. It will take about three and a half years to complete the port construction as well as other infrastructure and utilities, so within four years from now you can set up factories in Dawei.

"From Bangkok to Dawei, the distance is only 350 kilometres. The Thai government's project to build a motorway from Bang Yai to Kanchanaburi and the border with Burma will also benefit the project.

"In terms of scale, the Dawei mega-project, with a total area of 250 square kilometres, is 10 times bigger than Thailand's eastern seaboard, while the Dawei deep-sea port will be twice as large as Thailand's Laem Chabang port, which could also be linked with Dawei by highway (allowing seaborne cargoes from Thailand to bypass the longer traditional shipping routes to the Indian Ocean)," he said.

nationmultimedia.com

China energy trader eyes $2.5 bln Myanmar refinery - Chen Aizhu

2012-01-13T11:27:00.000-08:00

BEIJING, Jan 12 - China's Guangdong Zhenrong Energy Co. Ltd, an oil and commodity trader partly owned by state-run Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp, is scouting for sites in Myanmar to build a 100,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery, the company's chief executive said.

The project, estimated to cost $2.5 billion, is likely to be located in the southern port city of Dawei and built by 2015, chief executive Xiong Shaohui told Reuters by telephone from the company's headquarters in southern Guangzhou.

He did not elaborate, and it was not immediately clear if the project would be built in the multi-billion dollar Dawei Special Industrial Zone, which, once complete, will be Southeast Asia's largest industrial area and a vital source of revenue for a government seeking to overhaul Myanmar's economy.

"We're inspecting for the potential sites and have tentatively selected southern port city Dawei, near the Andaman Sea," Xiong said.

Guangdong Zhenrong will partner with two Myanmar firms -- privately run Htoo Group of Companies and a military-affiliated company which Xiong didn't give a name.

The project will be totally funded the Chinese firm and Xiong said his company would have no problem footing the bill. China is Myanmar's biggest ally.

The proposed refinery is tiny by Chinese standards but could meet 60 percent of the Myanmar market's demand for refined fuel, said Xiong. Myanmar has a total refining capacity of 51,000 bpd, and it imports almost all of its domestic fuel needs.

The 250 sq km (97 sq mile), $50 billion Dawei project will include an $8 billion deep-sea port, an oil refinery and a petrochemical factory, Myanmar officials have said.

The project is spearheaded by Thai building contractor Italian-Thai Development Pcl and is scheduled to be ready by 2019. It is located in the Tanintharyi region of southern Myanmar on the Indian Ocean.

This week, Myanmar's government abruptly halted constrution of a 4,000 megawatt coal-fired power plant at the Dawei zone following a domestic outcry over its environmental impact.

That decision follows the suspension last October, also on environmental grounds, of the Chinese-led $3.6 billion Myitsone dam, a move that stunned China but won President Thein Sein political credit among sceptics at home and abroad, who have doubted his government's commitment to reform.

Xiong said he was confident the refinery would not encounter any opposition.

"The way we run our business will be different from many other companies investing in Myanmar. We want to make inputs first," he said.

"First of all, we want to train hundreds of local workers, bring in the first-class refining technology and make sure our partners are happy working with us."

FIRST REFINERY INVESTMENT

Guangdong Zhenrong, which recorded an annual turnover of 16 billion yuan ($2.53 billion) in 2010, is partly owned by Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp, one of China's top four state petroleum traders which was until the late 1990s' an affiliate of the military.

On the company website (www.gdzhenrong.com), Guangdong Zhenrong said its other stake holders have "powerful administrative resources and expansive platforms". It gave no further details.

The proposed refinery, which may process crude oil from the Middle East and Asia, would be the first foray into the refining business for Guangdong Zhenrong.

Xiong, who used to manage Chinese oil firms' trade quotas at the Ministry of Commerce, said the refinery project was not linked to top Chinese energy group CNPC's business in Myanmar.

CNPC, parent of PetroChina, is laying oil and natural gas pipelines that connect Myanmar with China's southwestern province of Yunnan, a landlocked region that is short of energy resources.

In addition to the proposed refinery, Guangdong Zhenrong is building a 100,000 cubic metres (630,000 barrels) refined fuel storage tanks in Yangon, which are expected to be complete around April this year when the moonsoon ends, said Xiong.

The implications of Burma's progress

2012-01-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

Watching Burma's ongoing progress towards democratic reforms and political dialogue from afar is like seeing sprinkling rain turning into a light downpour after a long drought over two decades. It is a spectacular and stunning sight thus far, partly because the long drought stirred pent-up demands and grievances for ways forward.

Now good news abounds in Burma after years of bad news and no news, which meant bad news. While what transpires next door to the west will be portentous and deeply consequential for Thailand in the medium- and longer-term, Thai leaders both in politics and business do not seem tuned in to the ramifications from Burma's democratic uptick and turnaround.

Burma is arguably the single most important country to Thailand in terms of national interest. It is difficult to pinpoint the turning point in Burma's recent progress on democratic reforms and political reconciliation between the government of Prime Minister Thein Sein, and Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition who has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest ordered by the same military regime which is now governing under a civilian guise.

As the constitution that was promulgated in 2008 and the ensuing elections in 2010 were both deemed illegitimate, it seemed like a bogus government was produced by a bogus election under a bogus constitution.

But events on the ground over recent months have suggested otherwise.

It appears that the meeting between President Thein Sein and Mrs Suu Kyi on Aug 19 last year crossed a threshold of sorts. After that meeting, goodwill, dialogue and reforms seem to have carried the day, now generating a breathtaking momentum that will not be easily halted or reversed.

This momentum has been punctuated by key concessions from the parties involved, from the Naypyidaw government's substantial but incomplete release of political prisoners and ease on Mrs Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, to the limited curtailment of sanctions from Western countries and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' granting Burma the grouping's rotational chairmanship for 2014. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's three-day visit to Burma on Nov 30 last year, following President Barack Obama's overture olive branch during the recent Asia-focused summit season, provided a green light for high-level visits from other countries.

Mrs Clinton met with both Mr Thein Sein and Mrs Suu Kyi where symbolism was as important as substance.

Despite the apparent turnaround and progress, it is unclear if or how this remarkable reform momentum will be maintained. Presumably, there are conservative elements of the old regime lurking in corners and corridors looking for ways to derail the reform and dialogue train.

Burma has come so far in so short a time but it has a long way to go to become a genuine democracy. By-elections on April 1, which could send Mrs Suu Kyi to parliament, is the next telltale sign of near-term political direction.

That such reforms and concessions have been implemented in short order and the formidable Mrs Suu Kyi's willingness to join in the dialogue is puzzling.

Why the sudden flicker of light, to invoke President Obama's metaphor, after long years of darkness?

In fact, it may well have to do with the women's network in the heart of Rangoon, the former capital and still the hub of international life in Burma. From sources that have been verified, it appears Mr Thein Sein's wife is an admirer of Mrs Suu Kyi. The two women hold a fond regard for each other and hence Mrs Suu Kyi's goodwill towards the president. As confirmed and relayed through a senior diplomatic informant, "If she [Thein Sein's wife] can be married to him for so long, he must not be such a bad man."

If the Thein Sein-Suu Kyi axis is fundamental to the reform momentum, then women's power and network have been a vital component.

For Thai security considerations, the reforms in Burma bear far-reaching repercussions. The upshot of these reforms is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the threat of nuclear weapons emanating from Naypyidaw has dissipated. Burma was reportedly interested in developing crude nuclear capabilities with North Korean assistance. A nuclearised Burma would likely have been a game changer for Thai security, leaving Bangkok vulnerable to nuclear blackmail and triggering a Thai response to eliminate such insecurity.

However, Mrs Clinton's visit and the Obama administration's overall engagement were reportedly hinged on a halt to Burma's nuclear programme. It was a "deal maker" with which the Burmese military and Mr Thein Sein's government complied.

While the nuclear threat has waned, Thailand's energy insecurity has grown. The recent cancellation of a coal-fired power plant in the Dawei Special Economic Zone due to environmental concern serves as a case in point. This plant was designed to produce 4,000 megawatts of electricity for the Dawei Development Project, a US$58 billion agreement reached in May 2008 between the governments of Burma and Thailand. This project has transcended Thailand's political divide.

The Dawei Development Project, in turn, would be a lifeline for Thai energy and development needs for years to come, shifting some of the polluting industries from Thailand to its neighbour, especially since the row between civil society and government over Map Ta Phut health and environmental impacts. Thai leaders in the recent past have clearly indicated so. The long-term project would include industrial zones, a new city, deep-sea ports, infrastructure, oil and gas pipelines, and heavy industries such as chemical and steel factories. It would quench some of the Thai thirst for natural gas which produces more than 70% of electricity supplies in Thailand. Gas imports from Burma are now more than 25% total natural gas consumption, and this figure will only grow in the future. The Dawei project is a desperate sign of Thai energy insecurity.

Moreover, Thailand relies on migrant labourers from Burma, especially from Karen and Shan states. More than two million of these workers take up back-breaking and menial jobs all over the Thai economy, and have become an indispensable component of Thai economic growth.

While these workers have entered their second and third generations, Thai authorities still do not have adequate plans to integrate them or provide long-term human security for them to avoid medium-term social problems from a lack of education and healthcare.

Burma's reform progress can only be good for its people. For Thailand, a more democratic Burma means that lucrative business deals can no longer be taken for granted in the same way. More transparency and accountability may be in the offing at the expense of shady concessions and commissions with past military rulers.

This is a time when Thai leaders need to secure their country's energy and development needs with less dependence on neighbours, by focusing on issues such as nuclear power, sustainable industrialisation, industrial upgrading, skills training, education, state-society trust and accommodation, and so forth.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is Director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.

Thai energy firm eyes Tavoy alternative

2012-01-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

Thailand’s main energy firm, PTT, may approach the Burmese government over the construction of a hydrocarbon power plant in the Tavoy industrial zone, following Monday’s shock cancellation of a 4,000 MW coal-fired plant there.

The PTT head, Pailin Chuchottaworn, told Reuters today that it is “keen to invest in a hydrocarbon power plant, which Myanmar [Burma] does not have”, but would first gauge opinion from the government over where their interests lay.

The move to scrap the coal plant has surprised observers and stakeholders alike: Ital-Thai, the lead company in the Tavoy Special Industrial Zone claims it was not informed of the decision prior to Burma’s environment minister announcing it two days ago.

Some 3,600 MW of the power produced by the plant, located in southern Burma’s Tenasserim division, had been destined for Thailand; analysts believe however that the government may still go ahead with a smaller plant that would power construction of the 200 sq-kilometre industrial site.

The project, which will eventually run to around $US50 billion, is key to regional economies hungry for greater trade with the west. A major highway running from Kanchanaburi in Thailand to Tavoy will connect with a deep-sea port on Burma’s Andaman Sea coastline, which is being built to accommodate around 55 vessels laden with cargo at any one time.

But the venture has attracted huge animosity among locals, with disquiet centring on the massive, and likely highly pollutive, coal plant. Campaigners have pointed to the health problems linked to the Tigyit coal mine close to Shan state, where an adjacent coal-fired plant, to date Burma’s largest, has resulted in alarming levels of toxins in the air and nearby waterways.

The Tavoy plant however would have dwarfed the 120 MW plant in Tigyit, which a report last year said could produce pollution on such a scale that 12,000 people living nearby are forced to relocate.

A natural gas plant has been mooted as a possible alternative for Tavoy, but PTT thinks a proposal for hydrocarbon may find a warmer audience.

In addition to the coal plant and deep-sea port, the complex would have housed petrochemical plants, steel mills and plastics factories. Local campaigners believe up to 30,000 could be displaced by the project, which upon completion in 2019 is expected to be Southeast Asia’s largest industrial zone.

Myanmar’s stop-go investments

2012-01-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

The “will of the people” is not a phrase you hear very often in government communications about foreign direct investment in Myanmar. But that is the reason the nominally civilian government of president Thein Sein gave for its surprise decision to cancel a multibillion dollar coal-fired power plant project by Thaipower and construction companies on Myanmar’s southeast coast.

Khin Maung Soe, one of Myanmar’s energy ministers, told reporters in Yangon the government decided to cancel the project after “listening to the people’s voice”, according to Agence France Presse.

In another surprising statement – “surprising” given Myanmar’s record on protecting citizens’ rights – he said the government had become concerned about the environmental impact of the coal-fired plant after “reading media reports”.

The plant is part of the preliminary development of the $56bn-plus Dawei special economic zone being led by Italian-Thai Development, Thailand’s largest construction company. ITD signed an agreement with Ratchaburi Electricity Generating last year to build the 4,000-megawatt plant to provide power for construction of the Dawei zone, which includes petrochemical, steel-making and fertiliser plants as well as deep-sea port facilities. Costs for the first, four-year phase of the project to 2014 is estimated at about $8bn.

The Dawei zone is one of the largest and most ambitious development projects in Asia. While ITD is struggling to raise funds for the construction, the premise at the heart of the plan – a “supercorridor” of high-speed transport stretching from Vietnam throughThailand to the Dawei industrial and shipping facilities straight on the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean – has drawn strong interest from several governments, including the Japanese, South Korean, Thai and Chinese, as well as potential investors throughout the region.

The abrupt cancellation of the power plant is a setback but not a critical blow to the Dawei mega-plan. Myanmar is still considering a plan to build a smaller, 400-megawatt plant to provide necessary electricity for the first phase, the energy minister noted.

But the move has deepened mistrust among potential and existing investors in Myanmar – just a few months after the government abruptly moved to suspend construction of a $3.6bn Chinese-financed dam project at Myitsone, in Myanmar’s northeast.

In both cases, the entities involed were not given advance notice of Myanmar’s decision. Following news of the Dawei decision, a headline in Wednesday’s Bangkok Post said it all: “Thais in the dark on Dawei plant.” ITD and its partner Ratchaburi however put a brave face on it, telling the Post they were confident the plant would proceed, “perhaps using natural gas instead”.

In the case of the Myitsone dam, the government also cited popular opposition as a reason for suspending the project. Whatever the motivation, the moves are the first real sign that the government is beginning to heed public opinion. Indeed, before the Myitsone decision, unprecedented public criticism of growing Chinese investment in Myanmar, from gas pipelines and other resources to construction and rail projects, galvanised academics, environmentalists and Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader.

Ultimately, say diplomats, Myanmar’s government hopes sanctions imposed by the US and European Union will be eased, possibly this year. Australia announced some loosening of its sanctions this week.

“The hope is that with sanctions lifted, Myanmar will attract the kind of investment it really wants – from big western companies. But they have to realise they need to put in place proper investor protections, and the abrupt cancellations send the wrong signal in this regard”, remarked one Yangon-based western diplomat.

For the Chinese, who are increasingly portrayed as the “villain investors” in Myanmar, the move against the Dawei plant at least provides comfort, of sorts. They do not have to feel discriminated against in Myanmar’s growing push for reform. The treatment, as the Thais have now found, is equal – and sometimes equally brutal.

Power plants, dams and mind games in Burma

2012-01-11T07:55:00.000-08:00

Burma’s befuddling rulers have launched another surprise attack on our (somewhat waning) ability to rationalise what is happening in Naypyidaw: four months after the shock suspension of the China-backed Myitsone Dam in the country’s north, the government’s environment minister yesterday announced that a massive, Thai-financed power plant in the south of the country has been scrapped.

The move has prompted two immediate questions: first, what has become of the 60-year lease awarded to Ital-Thai to develop the Dawei industrial zone (surely it has been spectacularly breached)? Second, with the cancellation of the 4,000 MW plant, whose output would have contributed towards powering construction of the vast array of factories and petrochemical plants the 200 square-kilometre site will house, how can the project possibly continue?

Like the Myitsone decision, the government has cited public opposition as the key trigger for the Dawei cancellation; also like Myitsone, its newfound fans have been quick to link the scrapping of the plant to the reformist nature of Thein Sein and his cabinet. But while it may have been China’s increasing economic influence in Burma, rather than disquiet among Burmese, that prompted the country’s nationalistic rulers to (temporarily) jump ship on Myitsone, the Dawei decision is slightly more puzzling – the government doesn’t stand to benefit, economically or ideologically, unless it has really developed a conscience and translated that into policy.

What is being left out of the initial reactions however is the fact that a coal-fired plant will in all probability still be built, only that its size will dramatically reduce. The industrial site, which upon completion is set to be Southeast Asia’s largest, and which will forever reshape Burma’s Andaman Sea coastline, can survive on a plant that produces only 400 MW – the surplus 3,600 MW was due to be sold off to Thailand, which has provided the bulk of the US$8 billion start-up costs for the project (which is expected to eventually reach US$50 billion).

Pressure had been building on the Burmese government from a range of players angry at the health impacts synonymous with a project of this size – locals around Dawei, a sleepy fishing town, have vehemently rejected the venture, which it is estimated could displace up to 30,000 people (Ital-Thai put the figure at 10,000 last year). Moreover, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) has actively resisted the construction of a road that will link Dawei to Bangkok (which will in turn feed other regional economies), and demanded recently that Ital-Thai carry out an environmental impact assessment before going any further with it.

The Karen army denies that the Dawei decision is linked to attempts to broker a ceasefire deal with the government: its spokesperson, David Htaw, told me today that while it had pushed for a survey of the road, the coal plant was not mentioned in discussions with government officials.

So where does that leave us? In something of a quagmire of contradictions and bemusement, to be frank: any paean to public opinion in Burma by the government must be contrasted with its army’s ongoing, vicious attacks against civilians in the border regions, and the decision to allow only 32 political prisoners free earlier this month (despite the mother of all diplomats, Hillary Clinton, calling for giant steps in that department).

It may be that the combination of public animosity and the potential for military attacks on the Dawei project from the KNLA proved too portentous, as indeed was the case with Myitsone which lay unnervingly close to Kachin rebel territory; even that the discrepancy between the amount of power needed for construction of the industrial complex, and the final figure of 4,000 MW, was always going to be something of a numerical buffer zone for the government, within which it could manoeuvre dazzlingly but not lose out on the prized asset that is the industrial zone – perhaps the key indicator of its rising strategic status in the region.

This of course doesn’t factor in the likely fallout that’ll come as Ital-Thai, and indeed energy-hungry Thailand, formulate some sort of response to the cancellation, which will have also stretched Burma’s own Special Economic Zone (SEZ) laws to the fullest – for that we’ll just have to wait, but as the Burmese government showed after Myitsone, if it can quickly mend bridges with the aggressive powerhouse to the north, not to mention its adeptness at convincing the West that it is heading in the right direction, then its powers of appeasement are perhaps greater than it is given credit for.

Thais in the dark on Dawei plant

2012-01-11T07:51:00.000-08:00

Local firms say project halt is news to them

Thai companies remain confident in the future of a 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant at Dawei despite Burma abruptly halting construction on Monday after a domestic outcry over the plant's environmental impact.

Italian-Thai Development (ITD) and its partner Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Plc (Ratch) said they had yet to be notified and were satisfied the power plant would proceed, perhaps using natural gas instead.

"If they don't want coal-fired power plants, we have to look for other fuel sources. It could be natural gas, and we'd need to discuss how to supply that," said Somchet Thinaphong, the managing director of Dawei Development Co.

Ratch president Noppol Milinthanggoon said his company had not received an official report from Burma.

"It needs to be verified thoroughly before making any comment," he said, adding that it would be better to let ITD speak, as the construction company holds a 25% stake in the proposed power project.

Original story: Burma cancels Dawei power plant project
The suspension of the project illustrates the unpredictable business climate in Burma as a new government seeks to boost its public image while attracting investors to help revive the economy.

The decision to put the brakes on the plant follows the suspension last October on environmental grounds of the Chinese-led, US$3.6-billion Myitsone dam, a move that stunned China _ Burma's biggest ally _ but won President Thein Sein political credit among sceptics at home and abroad who have doubted his government's commitment to reform.

Like Myitsone, Dawei has been strongly opposed by local residents and environmental groups. The government's willingness to heed such opposition is all the more remarkable in that many among the leadership were also part of the former junta.

The 250-square-kilometre, $50-billion Dawei Special Economic Zone will be Southeast Asia's largest industrial area and a vital source of revenue for a government seeking to overhaul its economy and raise living standards.

Dawei will include an $8-billion deep-sea port, an oil refinery and a petrochemical factory in a project scheduled to be developed in three phases from 2010-19.

It is located in the Tanintharyi region of southern Burma on the Indian Ocean, 350 km west of Bangkok.

Thun Reansuwan, a first executive vice-president of Siam Commercial Bank, the financial adviser for Dawei, says further elaboration of the project is needed.

"If the government is concerned about the environment, then we need to discuss and understand why coal-fired power plants were proposed," he said.

"If they decide to use other fuel, then we have to think about electricity prices."

Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at Hong Kong University, said the suspension of the Dawei plant could reflect disunity in a government in which reformers want rapprochement with the outside world but hard-liners want to maintain tight control.

"There are difference in the regime between liberals and the old guard about the extent of its openness in terms of the economy and politics," he said.

Shares of ITD, Thailand's biggest building contractor, closed yesterday on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at 3.64 baht, down 2 satang, in trade worth 204 million baht. RATCH shares were unchanged at 44 baht, in trade worth 31.2 million baht.

Burma cancels huge Tavoy power plant

2012-01-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

Burma cancelled a proposed coal-fired power plant at a Thai-led industrial site Monday citing “environmental problems”, an energy official said, in the latest sign of burgeoning reform.

The move echoes a decision to halt an unpopular Chinese-backed mega dam last year as Burma’s nominally civilian leadership looks to demonstrate its democratic credentials after taking power from the ruling junta in March.

Electricity minister Khin Maung Soe said the decision not to allow the power plant, part of the huge Dawei [Tavoy] Development Project, was made after “listening to the people’s voice”, a senior official at the Rangoon city electricity supply board told AFP.

The multi-billion-dollar development in the south, run by industrial giant Ital-Thai Group, had sparked activists’ fears about a potential influx of “dirty” industry and the displacement of thousands of people.

Thin Aung, director general of the Thai company’s Tavoy development arm, said his group was not aware of such a decision, adding that a meeting between officials from Thailand and Burma on Saturday “went well”.

He said activists were “exaggerating” the risks of the plant.

“We have consulted with Chinese experts. I have to say there is no 100 percent safe coal-power plant but it will be safe enough, so there is nothing to be worried about,” Thin Aung said.

Plans for the site also include a deep-sea port, steel mill, fertiliser plant and oil refinery — potential boons for energy-hungry Thailand — and is likely to transform the sleepy coastal area facing the Indian Ocean.

Ital-Thai last year said about 10,000 people would be uprooted by the development, but insisted they would be provided with new settlements.

Burma’s army-backed government has surprised observers in recent months with gestures including talks with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

In September, new President Thein Sein ordered work on the huge $US3.6-billion Chinese-backed Myitsone Dam to stop after local pressure, sparking anger in Beijing.

China has given diplomatic support to internationally isolated Burma and is its biggest foreign investor, followed by Thailand.

The Rangoon official said the electricity minister had suggested another source of power for the factory would have to be found, adding the country would “seriously think” about using coal in other plants.

Ital-Thai’s Thin Aung said the initial proposal would be to build one coal and one hydroelectric power plant to generate electricity for the construction of the wider development.

4,000-MW power plant project cancelled in Dawei

2012-01-09T07:51:00.000-08:00

Construction underway on a bridge in the Dawei deep-sea port special economic zone. Photo: AFP

The No. 2 Electrical Power Ministry Minister Zaw Min said on Monday that a 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant project to built in the Dawei special economic zone in southern Burma will be cancelled.

The minister made the announcement during a press conference at the Electric Power distribution centre in Ahlone, Rangoon Region on Monday.

“In fact, we took this decision after reading articles in the media, and we decided to stop this mega-project which would generate a huge amount of power. But we are still considering whether we should continue a small power plant project of 400 megawatts or not,” the minister said.

The 400-MW power plant project would generate power to be used in the preliminary projects to be built in the Dawei special economic zone.

A senior official at the Yangon city electricity supply board told Agence France Presse the decision was made after "listening to the people's voice.”

The director general of the Thai construction company's Dawei development arm said his group was not aware of the decision, AFP said, and environmental activists were "exaggerating" the risks of the plant.

The project site area is in the ancient city of Thagara in Tanintharyi Region, which is near Naphu Le village in Yephyu Township, 20 miles northwest of Dawei.

The former military junta signed a memorandum of understanding with the Italian-Thai Development Public Co. Ltd. in 2008 and in 2010 again signed 75-year operation agreement.

According to figures compiled by Dawei Region Development Organization, 19 villages and about 32,279 people, 21 schools and 23 religious buildings will have to be relocated from the project site area.

The first phase of the project will be done in a five-year plan from 2010 to 2014; the second phase will be from 2014 to 2017, and the third phase will extend to 2019.

Environmental groups in Burma and Thailand have raised concerns about the damage the coal-firing power plants would cause to the environment. Recently, the new Burmese government cancelled the massive Myitsone hydropower dam project, in a move that surprised environmentalists.

In November, the construction company leading the Dawei project, the Italian-Thai Development Pcl, Thailand’s largest construction firm, said it signed an agreement with Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Pcl to build coal-fired power plants to provide electricity to the project and to Burma.

“We got Ratchaburi as a partner and we have three investors, two Japanese and one (South) Korean, who showed interest in the power plant project,” a company official said. It expected to find a partner for a steel smelting plant in Dawei in the first half of 2012, he said.

The construction company said in late December that it expected to reach a conclusion in 2012 on how it would finance the Dawei deep-sea port and infrastructure projects, which would include deep-sea ports, a chemical fertilizer plant, coal-fired power plants, a steel plant, chemical fuel plants, oil refineries, ship maintenance buildings, a railroad, roads and oil and natural gas pipelines. The environmental impact on the overall area will be massive, say environmentalists.

In late 2010, Italian-Thai signed an $8 billion contract for the deep-sea port and infrastructure project in Dawei in the Tanintharyi region of southern Burma.

Italian-Thai planned in 2012 to find partners for six projects, including power plants, oil and gas refineries, petrochemical, fertilizer, and steel plants and a port facility. It aimed to sell at least 50,000 rai (20,000 acres) of land at Dawei.

According to initial estimates, the development project, located about 20 miles from Dawei, will cost US$ 58 billion. In the first phase of the project calls for the port, coal-fired power plants, an industrial zone, a highway and railroad will be built in the 2010-14 period. The cost of the first phase is approximately US$ 8.6 billion; followed by the 160-kilometre, six-lane road and railroad which will connect with Kancahnaburi Province in Thailand through Yebyu Township, including oil and gas pipelines running along the super highway route.

The Karen National Union (KNU), which controls nearby areas in the Dawei industrial zone project, has prohibited road building for three months, citing the lack of an impact study on local residents and the environment that meets international standards.

Local residents said 200 buildings for staff quarters, residential buildings, offices, and meeting halls have been built in the Dawei deep-sea port project site, which is near Mayingyi, Hteingyi and Mudu villages.

The sub-contractors on the project include the Dawei Development Co., a subsidiary of Max Myanmar owned by Zaw Zaw; Dawei Princess Co., owned by Khin Zaw Min, the brother of former Triangle Region Command Commander Khin Zaw Oo; Myanmar Original Group; Kanaung Asia; Yuzana Co., owned by Tanintharyi Region MP Htay Myint; and San Thit Co.

Upon the completion of the Dawei project, countries throughout Southeast Asia will be able to access the Middle East and Europe more quickly with an estimated savings of 20 per cent in transportation costs.

Local environmentalists are trying to organize an awareness campaign on the pros and cons of the project among local residents in Dawei. The group said it would send open letter signed by more than 600 local residents to President Thein Sein and the Human Right Commission calling for closer scrutiny and more green development.

ထားဝယ္ စီမံကိန္းမွာ မဂၢါဝပ္ ၄,၀၀၀ ဓါတ္အားေပး႐ုံ မလုပ္ေတာ့

2012-01-09T07:48:00.001-08:00

တနသၤာရီတုိင္း ထားဝယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းတြင္ ပါဝင္သည့္ မဂၢါဝပ္ ၄,၀၀၀
ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသုံး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပး စက္႐ံုကို တည္ေဆာက္ေတာ့မည္ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း အမွတ္ ၂ လွ်ပ္စစ္ ဝန္ႀကီး ဦးခင္ေမာင္စိုး က တနလၤာေန႔တြင္ ေျပာၾကားလိုက္သည္။

ရန္ကုန္တိုင္း အလံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အားေပးေဝေရး အဖြဲ႔တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ေသာ သတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲ၌ ဝန္ႀကီးက ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

“အမွန္အတိုင္း ေျပာရရင္ မီဒီယာ သတင္းဂ်ာနယ္ေတြမွာ ေရးတာေတြကို ဖတ္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေလ့လာၿပီးမွ မလုပ္သင့္ ဘူးေဟ့ ဆိုၿပီး မလုပ္ေတာ့တာပါ။ အားလံုးကေနၿပီး ဒါလုပ္ရင္ေတာ့ ဘာျဖစ္မယ္ဆိုတာ ေရးၾကေတာ့ ဖတ္ၿပီး မလုပ္ျဖစ္တာ။ မဂၢါဝပ္ ၄၀၀ ကိုေတာ့ ျပန္စဥ္စားက်န္တာ ၄,၀၀၀ မဂၢါဝပ္ကိုေတာ့ ရပ္ဆိုၿပီး လုပ္ခဲ့ၾကတာ” ဟု ဝန္ႀကီးက ေျပာသည္။

၉.၁.၂ဝ၁၂ ရက္ေန႔က ျပဳလုပ္သည့္ သတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲတြင္ အမွတ္ ၂ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဝန္ႀကီး ဦးခင္ေမာင္စိုး က ထားဝယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းအတြင္းမွ မဂၢါဝပ္ ၄,၀၀၀ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး ဓါတ္အားေပးစက္႐ုံ မလုပ္ေတာ့ဟု ေျပာဆို (ဓါတ္ပံု မဇၥ်ိမ)

ဝန္ႀကီးေျပာသည့္ ၄၀၀ မဂၢါဝပ္ဆိုသည္မွာ အဆိုပါ စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ အႀကိဳလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား အသံုးျပဳမည့္ လွ်ပ္စစ္ ထုတ္ရန္ျဖစ္ၿပီး ယင္းကိုပင္လွ်င္ လုပ္သင့္/ မလုပ္သင့္ စဥ္းစားေနၾကသည္ဟု လွ်ပ္စစ္ အရာထမ္းတဦးက ရွင္းျပသည္။

ေဒၚလာသန္း ၅၈ ေထာင္တန္ ထားဝယ္စီမံကိန္းတြင္ လွ်ပ္စစ္ ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံု၊ ေရနံဓာတု စက္႐ံု၊ ေရနံခ်က္ စက္႐ံုအျပင္ သံမဏိ စက္႐ံုတို႔လည္း ပါဝင္မည္ ျဖစ္သည္။

စီမံကိန္းမွာ တနသၤာရီတုိင္း သာဂရၿမိဳ႕ေဟာင္းအနီး တည္ရွိကာ ထားဝယ္ၿမိဳ႕ အေနာက္ေျမာက္ဘက္ မုိင္ ၂၀ ခန္႔အကြာရွိ ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္ နဖူးလယ္ ေက်းရြာအနီးတြင္ ရွိၿပီး နအဖ အစုိးရလက္ထက္ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ Italian-Thai Development Public Co.,Ltd ႏွင့္ နားလည္မႈ စာခၽြန္လႊာ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးခဲ့ကာ ၂၀၁၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ တြင္ ၇၅ ႏွစ္ လုပ္ငန္း လုပ္ေဆာင္ခြင့္ သေဘာတူစာခ်ဳပ္ ခ်ဳပ္ဆိုထားျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ ေက်းရြာ ၁၉ ရြာ၊ လူဦးေရ ၃၂,၂၇၉ ဦး၊ စာသင္ေက်ာင္း ၂၁ ေက်ာင္းႏွင့္ ဘာသာေရး အေဆာက္အအံု ၂၃ ခု ဖယ္ရွားခံရမည္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ထားဝယ္ေဒသ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရး အဖြဲ႔က ျပဳစုထားေသာ စာရင္းမ်ားအရ သိရသည္။

စီမံကိန္းကုိ ၂၀၁၀ မွ ၂၀၁၄ အထိ ငါးႏွစ္စီမံကိန္းအျဖစ္ ပထမအဆင့္၊ ၂၀၁၄ မွ ၂၀၁၇ အထိ ဒုတိယအဆင့္၊ ၂၀၁၅ မွ ၂၀၁၉ အထိ တတိယအဆင့္ဟူ၍ သတ္မွတ္ကာ အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္ေနျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

ထား၀ယ္ဖြြ႔ံၿဖိဳးမႈအဖြဲ႔ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရး ထိုင္း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ကို ပန္ၾကား

2012-01-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္စီမံကိန္းတြင္း ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံဘက္ကေန တည္ေဆာက္မယ့္ စက္႐ံုေတြဟာ ေဒသခံေတြအတြက္ က်န္းမာေရး ထိခိုက္မႈနဲ႔အတူ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀င္းက်င္ ပ်က္ဆီးမႈေတြပါ ျဖစ္ေစတာမို႔ ကန္႔ကြက္ေၾကာင္း ထား၀ယ္ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔က ထိုင္း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ယင္းလပ္ ရွင္နာ၀ပ္ ဆီ လိပ္မူၿပီး အိတ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာ တစ္ေစာင္ ေပးပို႔လိုက္ပါတယ္။ ထား၀ယ္အထူး စီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ ေဒသခံေက်းရြာတခ်ိဳ႕ ေရြ႕ေျပာင္း ေပးေနရတာမ်ိဳးေတြလည္း ရွိသလို နစ္နာမႈေတြလည္း ႀကံဳေနၾကရတယ္လို႔လည္း ေဒသခံေတြက ဆိုပါတယ္။ ဒီအေျခအေန အျပည့္အစံုကို မသင္းသီရိက တင္ျပထားပါတယ္။

တနသၤာရီတိုင္း၊ ထား၀ယ္ခ႐ိုင္ ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွာ အေကာ္အထည္ေဖာ္ေနတဲ့ ထား၀ယ္ အထူး စက္မႈဇုန္ ေရနက္ဆိပ္စီမံကိန္းမွာ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုး ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ံု၊ သံမဏိစက္႐ံုနဲ႔ ေရနံခ်က္စက္႐ံုအျပင္ ဓာတ္ေျမၾသဇာ စက္႐ံုေတြကို ထိုင္းႏုိင္ငံက Italian-Thai Development ကုမၸဏီက ဦးေဆာင္ တည္ေဆာက္ေနတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီစက္႐ံုေတြဟာ ေဒသခံေတြရဲ႕က်န္းမာေရးကို ထိခိုက္ေစမွာျဖစ္သလို သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ကို အႀကီးအက်ယ္ ထိခိုက္မႈရွိေနတယ္ ဆိုတာကို သိဖို႔အတြက္ အိပ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာ တစ္ေစာင္ကို ထား၀ယ္ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔က ထိုင္း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ယင္းလပ္ ရွွင္နာ၀ပ္ ဆီကို ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၇ ရက္ေန႔က ေပးပို႔ခဲ့တာပါ။

ဒီစီမံကိန္းအတြက္ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၆ ရက္ေနနဲ႔ ၇ ရက္ေန႔ေတြမွာ ထား၀ယ္ေဒသတြင္း ျပဳလုပ္ေနတဲ့ အစည္းအေ၀းကို တက္ဖို႔ ေရာက္ေနၾကတဲ့ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံက ဘ႑ာေရး၀န္ႀကီး၊ စြမ္းအင္နဲ႔ ပို႔ေဆာင္ ဆက္သြယ္ေရးဌာနက ၀န္ႀကီးေတြကတဆင့္ ထိုင္း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ဆီကို ေပးဖို႔အတြက္ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ သေဘာထား တင္ျပခ်က္စာကို တဆင့္ေပးပို႔ခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္သလို ရန္ကုန္က ထိုင္းသံ႐ံုးကိုလည္း ပို႔ခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ထား၀ယ္ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးအဖြဲ႔က ကိုေလးလြင္က ေျပာပါတယ္။

“က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က ထိုင္း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ကို အိပ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာ ေပးတာကေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ေဒသမွာ စိမ္းလန္းစိုေျပ ၿပီးေတာ့ အဓြန္႔ရွည္တဲ့ တိုးတက္မႈမ်ိဳးကို က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ လုပ္ခ်င္တယ္။ ခုနကေျပာတဲ့ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးစက္႐ံုေတြ၊ သံမဏိစက္႐ံုေတြ၊ ေရနံခ်က္စက္႐ံုေတြ ဆိုတာက chemical ေတြဆိုေတာ့ အဲဒါမ်ိဳးေတြကိုေတာ့ မႀကိဳက္ဘူးေပါ့။ အဲဒါေတြက သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ကို ထိခိုက္မယ္၊ က်န္းမာေရး ထိခိုက္မယ္။ အဲဒီလိုမ်ိဳးေတြကို မလုပ္ဖို႔ က်ေနာ္တို႔က ေျပာတာပါ။ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းက တာ၀န္ခံကို ၀င္ေပးပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ အစည္းအေ၀း လုပ္တဲ့ေန႔မွာပဲ။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က က်န္တဲ့ဟာေတြကိုေတာ့ အီးေမးနဲ႔ ပို႔ပါတယ္။ သူတို႔ အီးေမးလိပ္စာေတြကိုေရာ ပို႔ပါတယ္။ စာကေတာ့ လက္ထဲေပးတာပါ။”

ဒါ့အျပင္ ဒီစီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ အိုးအိမ္ေနရာ ေရြ႕ေျပာင္းမႈေတြလည္း ရွိေနၿပီး ေဒသခံေတြမွာ ေနအိမ္ၿခံေျမေတြ အတြက္ ထိုက္တန္တဲ့ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးမရတာ အဆင္မေျပတာေတြလည္း ျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ အခုဆိုရင္ပဲ ထား၀ယ္ ေလာင္းလံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္ထဲက ေညာင္ပင္ဆိပ္ရြာကို မၾကာခင္ရက္ပိုင္းေတြတြင္းမွာ ရြာလံုးကၽြတ္ ေရြ႕ေျပာင္းဖို႔ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ထပ္ခါတလဲလဲ လာေျပာေနေပမဲ့ ရြာသားေတြအတြက္ ႀကိဳတင္ ေနရာစီစဥ္ေပးတာ မရွိသလို ဆံုးရံႈးၾကရေတာမယ့္ သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ လယ္ယာကိုင္းကၽြန္းနဲ႔ ၿခံေတြအတြက္လည္း ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးကိစၥ တိတိက်က် ဘာမွေျပာဆိုတာ မရွိဘူးလို႔ ေညာင္ပင္ဆိပ္ရြာက ဆရာေတာ္က မိန္႔ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ရြာသူရြာသားေတြဟာ စိုးရိမ္မႈေတြ ျဖစ္ေနၾကတယ္လုိ႔ ဆရာေတာ္က အခုလို မိန္႔ပါတယ္။

“အခုဆိုလို႔ရွိရင္ သူတို႔လာေျပာတာ တစ္ပတ္ေလာက္ ရွိသြားၿပီ။ မၾကာမၾကာ လာ လာေျပာတယ္။ ဆင္းရမယ္ ဆင္းရမယ္… ဆိုၿပီး သူတို႔က အာဏာနဲ႔ လာ လာေျပာတယ္။ အဲဒါ ရြာသူရြာသားေတြက ေၾကာက္တယ္။ နားလည္း နားမလည္ဘူးေပါ့။ ေတာသူေတာင္သားေတြ ဆုိေတာ့။ အဲဒါနဲ႔ပဲ ေၾကာက္ေနရတယ္ ဒကာမႀကီး။ ေနာက္ေတာ့ ေနရာ ေပးမယ္လို႔ သူတုိ႔က ေျပာတယ္။ သူတုိ႔ ေပးမယ္လို႔ေတာ့ ေျပာတယ္။ သို႔ေသာ္ျငားလည္း မေရမရာစကားေပါ့။ ဥပဇၨင္းတို႔ ေညာင္ပင္ဆိပ္ရြာမွာက ေတာသူေတာင္သားေတြ လယ္ယာကိုင္းကၽြန္းပဲ လုပ္စားတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ သီဟိုၿခံရွိတယ္၊ ရာဘာၿခံရွိတယ္။ အဲဒါ သူတို႔စီးပြားေရးနဲ႔ သူတုိ႔ ဘုိးစဥ္ေဘာင္ဆက္ အစဥ္ထာ၀ရ ေနလာခဲ့တာ။ အဲဒါကို ဘယ္ ေျပာင္းခ်င္မွာလဲ ဒကာမႀကီး။”

ထား၀ယ္ ေရနက္စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ ေျပာင္းေရြ႕ဖို႔ ဖိအားေပးခံေနရတဲ့ ေညာင္ပိတ္ဆိပ္ရြာက အေျခအေနကို ေညာင္ပင္ဆိပ္ရြာ ဆရာေတာ္ မိန္႔ခဲ့တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေဒသဆိုင္ရာ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြဘက္ကေတာ့ နစ္နာထားသူေတြကို ဇန္န၀ါရီလထဲမွာ ထိုက္တန္တဲ့ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေတြ စေပးမယ္လို႔ ေျပာေနေပမဲ့ လက္ရွိမွာ သူတုိ႔သတ္မွတ္ထားတဲ့ ေၾကးဟာ တန္ရာတန္ေၾကး မျဖစ္ဘဲ နစ္နာမႈေတြ ရွိေနတယ္လုိ႔လည္း ေ၀ဖန္သံေတြ ထြက္ေနပါတယ္။

ထား၀ယ္ စီးပြားေရး အထူးစက္မႈဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းတြင္းမွာ အဓိက ဇုန္ ၅ ခုပါ၀င္ၿပီး သံမဏိစက္႐ုံ၊ ဓာတ္ေျမၾသဇာစက္႐ုံ၊ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသုံး ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ုံ အျပင္ အႀကီးစား စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ပါ၀င္သလို ေရနံႏွင့္ သဘာ၀ဓာတ္ေငြ႔ဆိုင္ရာ စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္း၊ ရာဘာစက္႐ံုနဲ႔ ေရနံဓာတုအေျချပဳ စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္း၊ ေဆး၀ါး ထုတ္လုပ္ေရး၊ ကြန္ပ်ဴတာ ဆက္စပ္ပစၥည္း ထုတ္လုပ္ေရး အပါအ၀င္ အေသးစား စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းေတြလည္း ပါ၀င္မွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

VOA

Dawei project developers seek KNU cooperation

2012-01-06T03:03:00.000-08:00

For the past three months, Karen National Union officials have blocked construction on a road linking the Dawei Development Project to Thailand, after concerns over environmental impacts and complaints from residents who were forced to relocate.

The Tavoy (Dawei) deep-sea port project envisions that new Burmese
trans-border corridors will promote regional integration throughout
Southeast Asia. Through the port and transport links, an average of
10 days will be cut from the journey of goods bound for Thailand,
China, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos because cargo will no longer
need to pass through the Strait of Malacca.
Map: Dawei Development Project

Officials and environmental impact experts representing the Italian-Thai Development (ITD) group met with KNU officials on December 28 to try to restart the road construction, according to KNU Myeik-Dawei District chief Pado Saw Gwe Htoo Win.

KNU officials halted the construction because of overall environmental concerns about the massive deep-sea port project near Tavoy in southern Burma, and about the process of the forced relocations and confiscations of plantations and gardens, which have been purchased at lower-than-normal prices, residents said.

The KNU, which controls an area near the project, has been engaged in skirmishes in its control area. In July, road workers were forced to flee to Thailand after fighting broke out between the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), and government troops. Fighting flared again last month near Myitta, on the road’s route, highlighting the dangers to construction workers.

The projected road will link up to Kanchanaburi, Thailand. The ITD company wants the KNU to allow road construction to resume and to provide security for the project.

KNU Mega Project Research Committee chairman General Pado Saw Mutu Sayo, secretary Pado Dadomu and member Pado Saw David Taw attended the meeting held on the Thai-Burmese border. Pado Saw Gwe Htoo Win attended the meeting as a KNU regional official.

Representing ITD were Vice Chairman Anan Amarapala, a project assessment team from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and environmentalists, who explained the project at the meeting.

“They talked about the company’s plan, the impact on the natural environment and how they’ve conducted the environmental assessments. They also explained how they would pay compensation for the social impact,” Pado Saw Gwe Htoo Win told Mizzima.

Based on a 2010 impact report, ITD said that while the project would adversely affect the natural environment, the company would minimize damages and pay compensation for loss of homes, businesses and land, according to Pado Saw Gwe Htoo Win.

Estimates of displaced residents range from 30,000 by activists to 10,000 by company officials. ITD showed designs for small, medium and large homes for relocated residents. Residents told Mizzima that ITD planned to build 1,000 homes valued at about 15 million kyat each (about US$ 19,000) in Bwa Village, one of the four new villages to serve residents of 21 villages that will be relocated. The cash compensation for more than 100,000 acres of confiscated plantations or gardens was three times lower than current prices, residents said.

The KNU didn’t make a decision during the meeting, but said it would gather more information from residents and discuss the issue.

In May 2008, the foreign ministers of Burma and Thailand signed a memorandum of understanding on the US$ 58 billion project. The Dawei Development Project includes construction of industrial zones, a new city, deep-sea ports, a chemical fertilizer plant, a coal-fired power plant, a steel plant, chemical fuel plants, oil refineries, ship maintenance buildings, a railroad, roads and oil and natural gas pipelines. The environmental impact on the overall area will be massive, say environmentalists.

No Road Without Impact Assessment, KNU Tells Ital-Thai

2012-01-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

The Karen National Union (KNU) told representatives of the Italian-Thai Development Co., Ltd. (ITD) at a meeting on Dec. 28 that it will only allow construction of a new road linking Burma’s Tavoy Special Economic Zone to the Thai border to go ahead after an environmental impact assessment has been carried out.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, Saw Tah Doh Moo, the secretary of the KNU environmental committee, which met the ITD delegation, said: “They told us they want to do the road project, and we told them they need to complete an assessment first.”

The KNU wants ITD to show how much impact the road project, which passes through KNU-controlled territory, will have on the environment and local communities. The road is being built by ITD as part of the multi-billion-dollar Dawei Development Project, which aims to turn Tavoy into a major transport and manufacturing hub.

“We need an assessment of the environmental impact in order to find the best solution for local people. There is nothing to say if they complete the assessment,” said Saw Tah Doh Moo.

ITD has long sought an opportunity to discuss the road with the KNU, amid concerns about security that could force a suspension of the project unless it receives a green light from the ethnic armed group.

At the meeting, the ITD representatives promised that the company would complete an assessment that is already underway and report its findings to the KNU. The two sides agreed to meet again when the process was completed.

In September, the KNU forced the company to stop work on the road after villagers voiced concerns that that the project would have a negative impact on the environment and that many thousands of local villagers from more than 20 villages would be forcibly evicted from their homes.

Thailand plans to turn Tavoy's deep-sea port into a massive industrial complex that will provide Burma's more economically advanced neighbor with a ready supply of imported energy resources and a new conduit for its exports. The area will be administered as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) under an agreement reached between Burma and Thailand in May 2008.

However, rights groups say the project, which is still in the planning stages, has led to a government policy of land confiscation and forced relocation of local people. Environmentalists have also been strongly opposed to the project, which is expected to inflict major damage to the area's pristine coastline.

ITD is Thailand's largest construction company. The company's chairman, Premchai Karnasuta, told reporters in Bangkok on Dec. 26 that it expects to sign loan agreements in 2012 valued at US $12.5 billion from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation to develop the $60 billion project, which includes a deep-sea port, a 250-square-kilometer light and heavy industrial zone, a 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant, and road and railways links to the Thai border.

Mae Moh Coal-Fired Power Plant

2012-01-04T20:05:00.001-08:00

ထား၀ယ္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးစက္႐ုံ စီမံကိန္း ဆႏၵျပ

2012-01-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

တနသၤာရီတိုင္း ထား၀ယ္ေဒသ၌ တည္ေဆာက္မည့္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးစက္႐ုံ စီမံကိန္းကို ေဒသခံ ၂၀၀ ေက်ာ္က ယေန႔ ေမာင္း မကန္ ကမ္းေျခတြင္ ကန္႔ကြက္ဆႏၵျပေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
ယင္းစီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ညစ္ညမ္းပ်က္စီးၿပီး ေဒ သခံမ်ား အတြက္ ထိခိုက္နစ္နာမႈမ်ား ျဖစ္ေပၚလာႏုိင္၍ ထိုသုိ႔ ကန္႔ကြက္ရျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ဆႏၵျပရာတြင္ ပါ၀င္သူမ်ားက ေျပာ သည္။ ဆႏၵျပ အစီအစဥ္ ကို Green Development လႈပ္ရွားမႈဟု အမည္ေပးထားေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

From Ma Ta Phut to Burma

2012-01-03T10:39:00.001-08:00

ထား၀ယ္- ကန္ခ်နဘူရီ ကားလမ္း ဆက္လက္ေဖာက္ခြင့္ျပဳရန္ KNU သေဘာထားရွိ

2012-01-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

အီတာလ်ံ-ထုိင္းကုမၸဏီမွ တာ၀န္ယူေဖာက္လုပ္သည့္ ထား၀ယ္-ကန္ခ်နဘူရီကားလမ္း ဆက္လက္ေဖာက္လုပ္ေရးကို ကရင္ အမ်ဳိးသားအစည္းအ႐ုံး (KNU)မွ ခြင့္ျပဳေပးရန္ သေဘာထားရွိသည္ဟု သိရသည္။

ယခင္ႏွစ္ ဒီဇင္ဘာလ ၂၉ရက္ေန႔က အီတာလ်ံထုိင္းမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူမ်ား၊ တတ္သိပညာရွင္မ်ားႏွင့္ KNU မွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူတုိ႔ႏွင့္ ေတြ႕ဆုံခဲ့ရာတြင္ စီမံကိန္းမွ ျပဳလုပ္မမည့္ စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူခ်က္အေပၚ မူတည္၍ ၎လမ္းေဖာက္လုပ္မႈအား ခြင့္ျပဳရန္ စဥ္း စားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေကအဲန္ယူဘက္က ေျပာသည္။

ေကအဲန္ယူ ဘိတ္-ထား၀ယ္ခ႐ုိင္ ဥကၠဌ ပဒိုကြယ္ထူး၀င္းက “ေလာေလာဆယ္ လုံး၀ ခြင့္ျပဳတာကေတာ့ မရွိေသးဘူး။ စဥ္းစား ေပးတဲ့အဆင့္ပဲ ရွိေသးတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လုိ႔လဲဆုိေတာ့ ထြက္ေပၚလာမယ့္ တင္ျပခ်က္စစ္တမ္း(Survey)က ကိုက္ညီမႈရွိရင္ေတာ့ ခြင့္ျပဳရမွာေပါ့။”ဟု ေျပာသည္။

အဆုိပါ စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူခ်က္ထဲတြင္ စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည့္ဆုိးက်ဳိးမ်ား၊ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ား၏ အသက္ေမြး၀မ္း ေက်ာင္း ထိခုိက္နစ္နာမႈမ်ားကို ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ား ေက်နပ္သည္အထိ အီတာလ်ံ-ထုိင္းကုမၸဏီမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ တာ၀န္ယူေျဖ ရွင္းေပးရန္ KNU မွ ခ်မွတ္ထားသည့္ ေပၚလစီလမ္းစဥ္အတုိင္း ကိုက္ညီမႈရွိရမည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။

၎ေတြ႕ဆုံမႈတြင္ KNU က အီတာလ်ံ-ထုိင္း ကုမၸဏီမွ တာ၀န္ရွိသူႏွင့္ တတ္သိပညာရွင္မ်ားအား ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္းမွ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည့္ ဆုိးက်ဳိးမ်ားကို စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူၿပီး တင္ျပေပးရန္ ေတာင္းဆုိခဲ့သလုိ အီတာလ်ံ-ထုိင္းဘက္မွ လည္း KNU ဘက္က လုံၿခံဳေရးႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး တာ၀န္ယူေပးရန္စသည္ျဖင့္ ေတာင္းဆုိလွ်က္ရွိသည္ဟု သိရသည္။

KNU အေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမႉးခ်ဳပ္ ေနာ္စီဖုိးရာစိန္ကလည္း “ဒီကိစၥနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ က်မတုိ႔ KNU အေနနဲ႔ ေကာ္မတီ တစ္ရပ္ ဖဲြ႕စည္းထားပါတယ္။ ခြင့္ျပဳမျပဳဆုိတာက Survey အေပၚမွာ မူတည္ပါတယ္။ က်မတုိ႔ ဖဲြ႕စည္းထားတဲ့ ေကာ္မတီက လည္း သင့္လား မသင့္လားဆုိတာကို ၾကည့္ရအုံးမယ္။”ဟု ေျပာသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္းတြင္ ေဒသခံ ျပည္သူမ်ားအေပၚ အႏၱရာယ္ရွိလာသည့္ အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္ျဖင့္ ယမန္ႏွစ္ စက္တင္ဘာလက KNU မွ ထား၀ယ္-ကန္ခ်နဘူရီ ကားလမ္းေဖာက္လုပ္မႈကို တားျမစ္လုိက္သည္။ သုိ႔ေသာ္ ရိကၡာပစၥည္းမ်ား သယ္ေဆာင္သည့္ ယာဥ္မ်ားကိုမူ သြားလာခြင့္ ေပးထားေနဆဲျဖစ္သည္။

ယခင္က ကန္ခ်နဘူရီ-ထား၀ယ္ ကားလမ္းမႀကီးေဖာက္လုပ္မႈတြင္ အီတာလ်ံ-ထုိင္း ကုမၸဏီက KNU ထံ အသိမေပးဘဲ ေဖာက္လုပ္မႈေၾကာင့္ KNU တပ္မဟာ (၄) တပ္ဖဲြ႕၀င္မ်ား၏ ေႏွာက္ယွက္မႈကို ခံခဲ့ရၿပီးေနာက္ပုိင္း KNU အား ခ်ဥ္းကပ္မႈမ်ား လုပ္ေဆာင္လာျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

၎စီမံကိန္းမွာ ႀကီးမားသည့္အျပင္ စစ္ေရးပဋိပကၡ အဆံုးမသတ္ေသးခ်ိန္တြင္ မလုပ္ေဆာင္သင့္ေသးေၾကာင္း Karen Environmental and Social Action Network – KESAN တာ၀န္ခံ ေစာေပါစိန္ထြားက သူ၏အျမင္ကို ယခုလို ေျပာသည္။

“KNU ဘက္ကေတာ့ ဒီေလာက္ႀကီးမားတဲ့ စီမံကိန္းႀကီးအတြက္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးဘက္မွာ ဖိအားေပးေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးခံရတယ္။ ျပည္ သူေတြအတြက္ ၾကည့္မယ္ဆုိရင္ ဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ မလုပ္သင့္ေသးဘူးလုိ႔ပဲ ျမင္ပါတယ္။ လက္နက္ကိုင္ ပဋိပကၡေတြ မၿပီးဆုံးေသး တဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ အခုလုိ ႀကီးမားတဲ့ စီမံကိန္းေတြ မလုပ္သင့္ေသးဘူး။”ဟု ဆုိသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းစီမံကိန္းတြင္ စစ္တမ္းေကာက္ယူသည့္ အစုိးရမဟုတ္ေသာ အဖဲြ႕အစည္းမ်ား(NGOs)၏ ထုတ္ျပန္ ခ်က္အရ ထိုစီမံကိန္းတြင္ ေထာင္ႏွင့္ခ်ီသည့္ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ား၏ လယ္၊ ေျမ၊ ၿခံမ်ား ဆုံး႐ႈံးေနသလုိ ေက်းရြာ ၂၀ေက်ာ္မွ လူ ဦးေရ ၃၀,၀၀၀ေက်ာ္ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ခံရမည္ဟု သူက ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းစီမံကိန္းတြင္ စုစုေပါင္း အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၆၀သန္း ကုန္က်မည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး ေရနက္သေဘၤာဆိပ္ကမ္း၊ အေ၀းေျပးလမ္းမႀကီးႏွင့္ မီးရထားလမ္းေဖာက္လုပ္ငန္းမ်ား၊ ေရနံခ်က္စက္႐ုံ၊ စက္မႈဇုံနယ္ေျမမ်ား တည္ေဆာက္ျခင္း၊ ေရနံဓာ တုဆိုင္ရာ စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား ထူေထာင္ျခင္း၊ တည္ေဆာက္ျခင္း၊ လွ်ပ္စစ္စက္႐ုံမ်ား တည္ေဆာက္ျခင္း၊ စကၠဴႏွင့္ သံမဏိလုပ္ ငန္းမ်ား ပါ၀င္သည္။

ျခံပိုင္ရႇင္ ၃၆ ဦးအား ပထမသုတ္အျဖစ္ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏႇစ္ ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၁၀ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေပးမည္

2012-01-02T18:45:00.001-08:00

တနသၤာရီတုိင္းေဒသႀကီး ထား၀ယ္ခ႐ိုင္တြင္ တည္ေဆာက္ဆဲျဖစ္ေသာ ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏႇင့္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ ဧရိယာအတြင္း ပါ၀င္ေသာ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ ျခံေျမမ်ားအား အျမန္ဆံုး ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေပးႏုိင္ရန္ တာ၀န္ရႇိသူမ်ားမႇ စီစဥ္ေဆာင္ရြက္လ်က္ရႇိေၾကာင္း၊ ပထမသုတ္အျဖစ္ လက္ရႇိအေဆာက္အအံုမ်ား ေဆာက္လုပ္ထားရာတြင္ ပါ၀င္ေသာ ျခံပိုင္ရႇင္ ၃၆ ဦးအား ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၁၀ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကး စတင္ေပးအပ္သြားမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံမ်ားထံမႇ သိရသည္။

''စီမံကိန္းတာ၀န္ရႇိသူေတြက ေျမေလ်ာ္ေၾကး အျမန္ဆံုးေပးႏုိင္ဖို႔အတြက္ စီစဥ္ေနတယ္လို႔ ရြာထဲမႇာလုပ္တဲ့ ညႇိႏိႈင္းအစည္းအေ၀းပြဲမႇာ တာ၀န္ရႇိသူတစ္ဦးက ေျပာတာပါ။ အခုေရာက္လာတဲ့သူက ဒီမႇာရႇိေနတဲ့ အေထာက္ အကူျပဳ အဖြဲ႔ဥကၠ႒ ဦးတင္ေမာင္ေဆြနဲ႔ မတူဘူး။ ေနျပည္ေတာ္က ေရာက္လာတဲ့ မီးရထား၀န္ႀကီးဌာန ဒုတိယ၀န္ႀကီးလို႔ ေျပာတာပဲ။ သူက ေျမကိုဧက အလုိက္မေလ်ာ္ဘဲ အပင္ထြက္ႏႈန္းအတုိင္း ေလ်ာ္မယ္လို႔ ေျပာပါ တယ္။ ေပးအပ္မယ့္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြကို ေဒသခံေတြနဲ႔ေဆြးေႏြးၿပီး သီဟိုဠ္ ပထမတန္းစားကို က်ပ္ငါးေသာင္း၊ ဒုတိယတန္းစားကို က်ပ္ ၄၂၀၀၀၊ တတိယတန္းစားကို က်ပ္သံုးေသာင္းနဲ႔ တစ္ပင္အတြက္ သတ္မႇတ္ခဲ့ၿပီး ေျမသီးသန္႔ တစ္ဧကကို က်ပ္ငါးသိန္းအျဖစ္ ညႇိႏိႈင္းသတ္မႇတ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေရာ္ဘာကိုေတာ့ မသိရေသးပါဘူး။ လယ္ေျမေတြကိုေတာ့ ပိုင္ရႇင္ေတြဘက္က တစ္ဧကကို က်ပ္ ၂၅ သိန္း ေတာင္းပါတယ္။ ဒါကို သူတို႔က ေစ်းနည္းနည္းေလ်ာ့ေပးဖုိ႔ ညိႇႏႈိင္းခဲ့ရာမႇာ အဆင္မေျပခဲ့ပါဘူး။ အရင္က အေဒၚတို႔ျခံေတြကို ဧကအလုိက္ ေလ်ာ္မယ္ဆိုၿပီး တန္ဖိုးျဖတ္ လက္မႇတ္ထုိးတာေတြ ျပန္ျပင္ရေတာ့မယ္။ အစကတည္းက ဒီလို တစ္ပင္ခ်င္းအလုိက္ ေလ်ာ္လိုက္ရင္ ၿပီးၿပီ။ အခုေပးတဲ့ပံုစံကလည္း အရင္ကထက္ အဆင္ေျပလာေပမယ့္ ျပႆနာေတာ့ ရႇိေနေသးတယ္။ အခုသူတုိ႔ေပးတဲ့ တစ္ပင္အတြက္ေစ်းက တစ္ႏႇစ္အတြက္ပဲ ရႇိေသးတယ္။ ကံေပါက္မႇာ PTTE PI က ေလ်ာ္ခဲ့သလို စီမံကိန္း ငါးႏႇစ္စာအတြက္ တြက္ခ်က္ၿပီးေလ်ာ္တာကို လိုခ်င္တာပါ။ ဒါမႇလည္း အျခားလုပ္ငန္းေျပာင္းဖုိ႔ အခက္အခဲ မရႇိမႇာ။ အခုဒုတိယ၀န္ႀကီးက ပထမသုတ္အျဖစ္ လက္ရႇိတည္ေဆာက္ထားတဲ့ အေဆာက္အအံုေတြအတြက္ အသံုးျပဳထားတဲ့ ေျမပုိင္ရႇင္ေတြကို ဇန္န၀ါရီလ ၁၀ ရက္ေန႔မႇာ စၿပီးေလ်ာ္ေပးမယ္လုိ႔ သိရတယ္။ ၿပီးမႇ ေနာက္ထပ္တစ္ဆင့္ ၿပီး တစ္ဆင့္ ေလ်ာ္ေပးသြားမယ္တဲ့။ အေဒၚ့ျခံက လမ္းေၾကာင္းေဖာက္ရာမႇာ ပါသြားတာ။ ဘယ္အခ်ိန္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးရမလဲမသိဘူး။ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကး အျမန္ဆံုးလိုခ်င္ရင္ သူတို႔နဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ဖုိ႔ေျပာတယ္'' ဟု ထိန္ႀကီးရြာမႇ ျခံပိုင္ရႇင္တစ္ဦးက ေျပာပါသည္။

''အခုေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းမႇာ ေပးမယ့္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြက ကံေပါက္မႇာ PTTE PI က ေလ်ာ္ခ့ဲသလို ရရႇိႏုိင္မယ္ မထင္ဘူး။ PTTE PI မႇာက ႐ုံုးေျမေနရာနဲ႔ ပိုက္လိုင္းျဖတ္သြားမယ့္ ေနရာေတြပဲပါတာဆိုေတာ့ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေပး ရတဲ့ပမာဏ နည္းပါတယ္။ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းမႇာက ေျမဧရိယာ တစ္ခုလံုး ပါ၀င္ေနတာဆိုေတာ့ PTTE PI ထက္စာရင္ ပါ၀င္တဲ့ျခံေျမေတြက မ်ားတယ္၊ ဒီေတာ့ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေပးရာမႇာလည္း ပမာဏက မ်ားတာေပါ့။ ကံေပါက္မႇာလုိ စီမံကိန္းႏႇစ္ အတုိင္းတြက္ၿပီးေပးရင္ ပမာဏအမ်ားႀကီး ျဖစ္သြားႏုိင္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ သူတို႔ ေလ်ာ္မယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာင္ တစ္ႏႇစ္အတြက္ပဲေလ်ာ္ဖုိ႔ ျဖစ္ႏုိင္တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ေဒသခံေတြအတြက္ အခက္အခဲေတြ ျဖစ္လာႏုိင္တယ္။ တာ၀န္ရႇိသူေတြအေနနဲ႔ ႏႇစ္ဦးႏႇစ္ဖက္ အဆင္ေျပေအာင္ ညႇိႏႈိင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးသင့္ပါတယ္''ဟု ကံေပါက္ေဒသမႇ ေဇာတိက ပိုက္လိုင္းျဖတ္သန္းရာတြင္ ျခံေျမပါ၀င္ခဲ့၍ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြ ရရႇိခဲ့သူတစ္ဦးက ေျပာၾကားသည္။ ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ ဆိပ္ကမ္းဧရိယာမႇာ ဧက ၅၀၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ခန္႔ ပါ၀င္ေနၿပီး ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ ျခံေျမမ်ားအျပင္ ၀န္ႀကီးဌာနပိုင္ ျခံေျမမ်ားလည္း ပါ၀င္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

36 farm garden owners to be compensated in Dawei Deep Sea Area

2012-01-02T18:35:00.001-08:00

Authorities concerned have already made arrangements to compensate 36 owners of farm garden as early as possible whose land have been located in the Dawei Deep Sea Port Project and Special Economic Zone areas in Dawei District of Taninthayi Region. A total of 36 persons are included in the first batch of owners to be compensated for their farm lands on whose farms the project structures are recently constructed. They will be compensated on 10 January 2012, according to local residents.

An owner of a farm garden in Htain Gyi Village said, “A responsible person told at a negotiation meeting in the village that the authorities of the project are planning to compensate for farm garden at the earliest. The responsible person who arrives lately to the village is not from the assisting team of Chairman U Tin Maung Swe. The person is referred as Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Rail Transportation. He told the villagers that the compensation would be made not on the acre of farm garden but on the basis of yields of the trees in the farm”.

The farmer continued, “The rate of compensation is calculated in negotiation with the locals and decided that K. 50,000 compensation for the first class cashew tree. K. 42,000 for the second class and K. 30,000 for the third class. The calculation is based on each tree. Moreover, one acre of land is fixed at K. 500, 000 for compensation. The rate for compensation for rubber tree is not decided yet. The farm owners are insisting K. 2.5 million for agricultural land as compensation. The authorities asked the owners to take less and the negotiation could not be finalized. Therefore, the earlier signed agreement for compensation on farm garden will have to be amended. If the compensation was based on each tree from the beginning, the reimbursement plan would have been completed now. The recent calculation is much better than the earlier plan, but there are some problems. The recent offer is based only on the calculation for each year yield. We wanted the compensation similar to the reimbursement given by the PTTE PI of Thailand for Kan Bauk area calculated on five years yields. Only then, we will have no difficulty to change our livelihoods elsewhere. What we were told now is that the Deputy Minister instructed to compensate the farm garden owners on 10 January 2012. After that the remaining compensation will be considered phase by phase”.

The owner continued, “My farm garden was involved in the area for road construction. I don’t know when the compensation will come. They told us that if someone wants the reward at the earliest, one must cooperate with the compensating team”.

A farm garden owner in Kan Bauk area whose farm garden was involved in the Zaw Tika Pipeline Construction said, “The compensation calculated at the Dawei Deep Sea Port area is not high compared to the Kan Bauk area where the PTTE PI have reimbursed. The land taken by PTTI PI is meant for office buildings and for pipeline construction, and therefore, the areas is small and the compensation is lesser in amount. However, the land area in the intended Deep Sea Port is large compared to the PTTI PI project area. Therefore, the land involved is much larger and amount is enormous. If it is calculated similar to Kan Bauk area, then it could be for one year basis only. It would make the villagers more difficulties. Therefore, the authorities should consider and negotiate for mutual benefits to both sides”.

Dawei Deep Sea Port area involved about 50,000 acres of land and the vast land is owned by the local farmers and the concerning ministries.

Thailand to build hydropower dam on Taninthayi River

2012-01-02T18:32:00.001-08:00

Thailand will build a dam on Taninthayi River that can generate hydroelectricity, it was learnt. This dam will be built by Italian-Thai Development Public Co., Ltd that is under implementation for Dawei Deep Seaport and Special Economic Zone in Yayphyu Township, Dawei District, Taninthayi Region.

“Geographical conditions are better in Myanmar. It is thought that some groups in Thailand do not accept the projects that can damage to the environment. Therefore, the companies try to shift these projects to Myanmar. The projects include hydroelectric power plant, roads, dam and deep seaport. As these projects emit heavy pollution, the environmentalists in Thailand do not accept. Myanmar is rich in natural resources including water and natural gas. It is also known that there are some weaknesses in Myanmar laws,” said environmentalist Mr. Ork from Prachuab Kirikhan Province.

The dam to be built on Taninthayi River will generate about 800 megawatt and it is likely to send hydroelectricity to Thailand.

“Locals earlier did not know the plan to build a dam included in the projects,” said a local from Dawei.

The deforestation is being occurred due to official grant of extraction of timber, illegal extraction of timber, land reclamation for the cultivation of rubber and oil-palm in Dawei District, Taninthayi Region. In comparison with other places, there are still many unexplored resources in Taninthayi Region and it remains favorable forests and environment.

The dam to be built on Taninthayi River is located in Taninthayi Township. Taninthayi River is facing changes in waterways within these years as a result of deforestation.

Taninthayi River originates from Dawei District and flows through Taninthayi Township into the sea near Myeik.

Among the investments made in Myanmar, hydroelectricity and natural gas are the largest proportion of investment.

Italian Thai Development to conclude Dawei financing in 2012

2012-01-02T18:28:00.001-08:00

Italian Thai Development Pcl, Thailand's largest construction firm, said that it expected to reach a conclusion in 2012 on how it would finance the Dawei deep sea port and infrastructure projects in Myanmar.

Mr Premchai Karnasuta president of Italian Thai said that it has no plan to raise funds via an equity issue, but it planed to convert some land into capital and also receive revenue from land sales in Dawei. He added that "We are discussing with financial institutions about financing and received a good response from foreign banks."

Mr Premchai said that priorities included investing in infrastructure such as port, road and rail networks. Financial institutions from Japan and China have showed interest in extending loans for rail construction.

In late 2010, Italian Thai signed a USD 8 billion contract for the deep sea port and infrastructure project in Dawei in the Tanintharyi region of southern Myanmar. The company has set up a unit, Dawei Development Co Ltd, to operate and construct the port and related infrastructure.

Italian Thai also planned to conclude in 2012 a plan to find partners for six projects, including power plants, oil and gas, petrochemical, fertilizer, steel and a port and it aimed to sell at least 20,000 acres of land at Dawei.

He said that the coal fired power plants are expected to need investment of USD 7 billion. It would need USD 3.5 billion for port and roads and another USD 2 billion for rail projects, adding his firm was in talks with foreign partners to jointly invest in the power plant project.

In November 2011, Italian Thai signed an agreement with Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Pcl to build coal fired power plants with a combined capacity of 4,000 MWs.

Mr Premchai said that "We got Ratchaburi as a partner and we have three investors, two Japanese and one South Korean, who showed interest in the power plant project."

He said that Italian Thai also planned to sell a stake in Dawei Development and the Myanmar's private sector was keen to buy a 25% of its unit. He added that "ITD will hold not less than 51% in Dawei Development and we are open for both Thai and foreign investors."

Mr Premchai said that strong domestic building projects should help boost the company's ongoing construction jobs, excluding Dawei, to reach THB 400 billion in 2012, up from THB 170 billion in 2011. The company is expected to post a net loss of THB 1.7 billion for 2011 and a loss of THB 37 million for 2012.

Poison Clouds

2011-12-23T03:28:00.001-08:00

21 villages to be relocated for Dawei project

2011-12-23T00:21:00.000-08:00

People view a photo exhibition of the area around the
Dawei deep-sea port project during a Rangoon
press conference organized by the Dawei Development
Group on Friday, December 16, 2011. Photo: Mizzima

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The Dawei Development Association (DDA), a local social group, said that 21 Burmese villages with a population of about 32,000 people would have to be relocated for the Dawei deep-sea port development project.

More than 100,000 acres of gardens and orchards owned by local people in Launglon and Yebyu townships in Dawei District, Tanintharyi Region have to be relocated, the group said.

Local farmers have complained that the compensation given by the authorities for their farmlands, gardens and orchards is too low.

Residents will be resettled in four new locations: new villages will be located in Htwet Wa village 1 and 2; Bwa village; Du Taung village 1 and 2; and Wazwam Taw village, which are about 10 miles north of the site of the Dawei deep sea port project.
In Bwa village, more than 1,000 new houses will be built at a cost of 15 million kyat (US$ 19,230).

The DDA held a press conference in Rangoon on December 15 in support of the residents’ claims.

The authorities plan to give compensation at the rate of 8,000 kyat ($10.25) for each rubber plant, and 5,000 kyat ($6.41) for each cashew tree. The rates are one third of the market price, sources said.

Dawei development project

The Burmese military regime and Thai government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in May 2008 for the 10-year Dawei development project which includes the Dawei deep-sea port, an industrial zone and a railroad and road connecting Dawei to Thailand. The Myanmar Port Authority and the builder, the Italian-Thai Co. (ITC), signed a MoU in June 2008.

A Development Project Framework Agreement was signed by Ministry of Transport, Myanmar Port Authority Managing Director Thein Htay and ITC chairman in November 2010.

According to initial estimates, the development project, located about 20 miles from Dawei, will cost US$ 58 billion. In the first phase, the port, a coal-fired power plant, an industrial zone, a highway and railroad will be built in the 2010-14 period. The cost of the first phase is approximately US$ 8.6 billion; followed by the 160-kilometre, six-lane road and railroad which will connect with Kancahnaburi Province in Thailand through Yebyu Township, including oil and gas pipelines running along the super highway route.

Environmental concerns

The Karen National Union (KNU), which operates in the Dawei industrial zone project area, has prohibited road building for three months, citing the lack of an impact study on local residents and the environment that meets international standards.

“It’s difficult to give them permission to build a road in this area unless they make a thorough Environment Impact Assessment (EIS) and Social Impact Assessment (SIS),” Myeik-Dawei District Chairman Saw Gwe Htoo Win told Mizzima.

Local residents said 200 buildings for staff quarters, residential buildings, offices, and meeting halls have been built in the Dawei deep-sea port project site, which is near Mayingyi, Hteingyi and Mudu villages.

The sub-contractors on the project include the Dawei Development Co., a subsidiary of Max Myanmar owned by Zaw Zaw; Dawei Princess Co., owned by Khin Zaw Min, the brother of former Triangle Region Command Commander Khin Zaw Oo; Myanmar Original Group; Kanaung Asia; Yuzana Co., owned by Tanintharyi Region MP Htay Myint; and San Thit Co.

Upon the completion of the Dawei project, Thailand will be able to access the Middle East and Europe more quickly with an estimated savings of 20 per cent in transportation costs. Laos and Vietnam will also have quicker access to western countries through Thailand and the Indian Ocean.

The DDA is trying to organize an awareness campaign on the pros and cons of the project among local residents in Dawei. The group said it would send open letter signed by more than 600 local residents to President Thein Sein and the Human Right Commission calling for closer scrutiny and more green development.

Turning Thailand’s buffer zone into a battlefield

2011-12-23T00:14:00.000-08:00

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra prays during
her visit to Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon (Reuters)

Thai-Burmese relations have always been erratic and they have hinged primarily on the types of leadership that have been seen on the Thai side. The Democrat government led by Chuan Leekpai from 1997-2001 implemented a hostile policy toward the Burmese junta to placate the western world. But when billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra was elected prime minister in 2001, bilateral ties became warm and amicable, and Burma as a historical enemy became Thailand’s friendly trading partner overnight.

Since the downfall of Thaksin in 2006, it is fair to say that Thailand has had no real policy toward Burma. Such floundering has unfortunately left Thai leaders in a disadvantageous position, in particular making them ill-equipped to comprehend the drastic changes in Burma which have taken place in the past few years. Now that Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of Thaksin, is in power, she is obliged to readjust the Thai approach so as to take benefit from the “civilianised Burma”. Any new policy will cause an inevitable impact on the Thai relations with the regime in Naypyidaw, the opposition as well as the ethnic minorities inside Burma.

Yingluck returned on Tuesday from her first official visit to Burma, where she met with President Thein Sein. High on the agenda in her talks with the government was the promotion of existing ties through bilateral frameworks and the strengthening of economic relations, such as the guaranteeing of Burma’s exports of gas and oil to Thailand and the Thai investment in the deep-sea port project in Tavoy. Yingluck also met with Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released from house arrest in November last year. Could this mean that Thailand is now diversifying its foreign policy options when it comes to its ties with Burma? So far, it seems that Yingluck is interested in reaching out to the opposition in Burma, and perhaps in aiding political reconciliation in the country.

Regardless of whether the reforms in Burma will be long term or simply superficial, the global community has welcomed political change in the country. The US has shifted its policy toward Naypyidaw. This could possibly lead to a lifting of sanctions against Burma in the near future. Meanwhile, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) recently granted the chairmanship to Burma for the year 2014. Suddenly, both friends and enemies of Burma have rushed to legitimise the Thein Sein regime. The Yingluck government is likely to go along with this trend. But a question emerges: How would a new Thai policy impact other aspects of the bilateral relationship?

For several decades, Thailand has turned vast areas under the occupation of ethnic insurgents along its common border with Burma into a buffer zone. As a result, while it forged strong ties with some ethnic minorities, particularly the Karen National Union (KNU), Thailand’s dealings with the Burmese government were characterised with suspicion and distrust.

If Yingluck is to follow in the footsteps of ASEAN and the US where state-to-state relations are to be consolidated at the expense of her country’s traditional ties with some ethnic minorities, she may expect to see some instability or insecurity along the border. Not all ethnic minorities in Burma are happy with the way political power has been distributed. After all, this is a game of power sharing among the Burmese elite. Even Suu Kyi has not made her policy clear on ethnic minorities and power distribution. Thus, with Yingluck’s legitimisation of the Thein Sein regime, bilateral relations may flourish; yet, some parts of the Thai-Burmese border could be transformed into battle zones.

This scenario could exacerbate the situation regarding human right violations against refugees from various ethnic minorities in Thailand. Discussions on this issue point to the fact that part of the Thai policy toward Burma has been dominated by the Thai military, particularly that involving national security. Sadly, the Thai army has lacked a sense of humanitarianism. The human right violations against the Rohingya in recent years have reaffirmed the Thai army’s attitude toward refugees from Burma. The Yingluck government itself has attempted to avoid upsetting the military for the sake of its own survival. Therefore, one should not expect that Yingluck would be entertaining a refugees-friendly policy, and definitely not when she also wishes to please the Burmese regime for Thailand’s economic benefits.

From this perspective, what is considered a new policy toward Burma, under the Yingluck administration, may not be new at all. Ultimately, Yingluck is just a Thaksin surrogate. She has shown scant vision in foreign affairs. Her ruling party, Pheu Thai, has never confirmed a commitment to promoting democracy, both insideThailandand toward neighbouring countries.

It is a pity that Yingluck, despite being a relatively young and fresh prime minister, might only grasp few of the opportunities that arrive with the changes in Burma. There will be many unanswered questions: can Thailand reposition itself in mainland Southeast Asia now that Burma has gradually become a normal state? Can Thailand take advantage from Burma’s chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014? And how can a new Burma contribute to the community building process of ASEAN of which Thailand is a member?

Pavin Chachavalpongpun is a fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

ထား၀ယ္စီမံကိန္း တြင္ မဂၢါ၀ပ္ ၄၀၀၀ ထုတ္လုပ္မည့္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသုံး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္ အားေပးစက္႐ုံ

2011-12-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

တနသၤာရီတုိင္းေဒသႀကီး ထား၀ယ္ခ႐ိုင္ ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္လ်က္ ရွိသည့္ ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းတြင္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသုံး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ုံ၊ ေရနံဓာတု အေျချပဳလုပ္ငန္းႏွင့္ အျခားေသာ အလားတူလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား ပါ၀င္မည္ ျဖစ္သည့္အတြက္ ေဒသခံတို႔၏ က်န္းမာေရးႏွင့္ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ အေပၚ သက္ေရာက္ႏိုင္ေျခမ်ား ရွိေနေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိပါသည္။

အဆိုပါစီမံကိန္းကို ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ ရိွ Italian-Thai Development Public Co.,Ltd မွလုပ္ေဆာင္ေနၿပီး ဧရိယာသည္ စတုရန္း ကီလိုမီတာ ၂၅၀ ရွိကာ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၇၅ ႏွစ္ ၀န္းက်င္ လုပ္ကုိင္မည္ျဖစ္သည္။
ဓာတုအေျချပဳလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ထိခိုက္မႈ၊ လူတို႔၏ က်န္းမာေရး ထိခိုက္မႈတို႔ကုိ ျဖစ္ေပၚေစသည့္ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားပါ၀င္ေနကာ ယင္းအနက္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသုံး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပး စက္႐ုံလည္း ပါ၀င္မည္ျဖစ္သည္။

“ေဒသကလူေတြကေတာ့ ေကာင္းက်ဳိးဆိုးက်ဳိးကုိ သိပ္မသိၾကပါဘူး။ အခု ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသုံး ဓာတ္အားေပး စက္႐ုံပါတယ္။ လူထုကုိ ထိခိုက္ႏုိင္တယ္။ ေဟာေျပာပြဲေတြ ေျပာေစခ်င္တယ္၊ သိေစခ်င္ပါတယ္”ဟု ထား၀ယ္ၿမိဳ႕မွေဒသခံ ဦးစိုးသိန္းက ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ထား၀ယ္အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ သည္ ျမန္မာအထူးစီးပြားေရး ဇုန္ဥပေဒအမွတ္ (၈/၂၀၁၁)၊ ပုဒ္မ (၄) အရ အစုိးရအဖြဲ႕က သတ္မွတ္ထားေသာဇုန္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းဥပေဒအရ ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္တြင္ အဆင့္ျမင့္နည္းပညာဇုန္မ်ား၊ သတင္း အခ်က္အလက္ႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ေရး နည္းပညာဇုန္မ်ား၊ ပုိ႔ကုန္ပစၥည္း ထုတ္လုပ္မႈဇုန္မ်ား၊ ဆိပ္ကမ္းနယ္ ေျမဇုန္မ်ား၊ ေထာက္ပံ့ေရးႏွင့္ သယ္ယူပုိ႔ေဆာင္ေရးဇုန္မ်ား၊ သိပၸံႏွင့္ နည္းပညာသုေတသနဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ ေရးဇုန္မ်ား၊ ၀န္ေဆာင္မႈလုပ္ငန္းဇုန္မ်ား၊ တစ္ဆင့္ခံ ကုန္သြယ္မႈဇုန္မ်ား ႏွင့္အစိုးရအဖြဲ႕ကအခါအားေလ်ာ္စြာ သတ္မွတ္သည့္ဇုန္မ်ား ပါ၀င္သည္။
“ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံက Mat Ta Phut မွာ ရပ္နားလိုက္ရတဲ့စက္႐ုံေတြ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို ေရႊ႕လာတာပါ။ အဲဒီစက္မႈဇုန္ရွိတဲ့ေဒသမွာ ေလထုညစ္ညမ္းမႈ၊ ေရထုညစ္ညမ္းမႈေတြ ၾကံဳခဲ့ရတယ္။ တျခားေဒသထက္ ကင္ဆာျဖစ္ပြားမႈ သုံးဆ၊ ေသြးကင္ဆာျဖစ္ပြားမႈ ငါးဆရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္”ဟု ေလ့လာသိရွိ ထားသူ ထား၀ယ္ေဒသခံ ကုိသန္႔ဇင္က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း ႏွင့္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္အတြင္း တနသၤာရီတုိင္းေဒသႀကီး ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္ရွိ ေက်းရြာ ၂၉ ရြာ ပါ၀င္ေနသည္။
“ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသုံး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္႐ုံက မဂၢါ၀ပ္ ၄၀၀၀ ထုတ္မယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ စက္မႈဇုန္မွာသုံးရင္ ကုန္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူး။ ထိုင္းကို ၃၀၀၀ ေလာက္ ေရာင္းမယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္”ဟု ကုိသန္႔ဇင္က ေျပာၾကားသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ အတြင္းဓာတုေဗဒစက္မႈလုပ္ငန္း မ်ား၊ ေရနံဓာတုလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား၊ အိမ္ သုတ္ေဆးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား၊ ေရာ္ဘာ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ား၊ စားေသာက္ကုန္လုပ္ ငန္းမ်ား စသည္တို႔ပါ၀င္လုပ္ကုိင္ မည္ျဖစ္ရာ ထိုလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားသည္ ဓာတုပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ပမာဏေျမာက္ ျမားစြာ အသုံးျပဳရေသာ စက္႐ုံ၊ လုပ္ ငန္းမ်ားျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားမွ ဓာတုေဘးပစၥည္းေျမာက္ျမား စြာထြက္ရွိသည့္အျပင္ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ရွိ ေလထု၊ ေရထု၊ ေျမထုကို ညစ္ညမ္းေစႏုိင္သည့္အတြက္ စနစ္တက် စြန္႔ပစ္မႈလိုအပ္ေနသည္ဟု သိရသည္။

ထိုင္းႏုိင္ငံအတြင္းတြင္လည္း Man Ta Phut Area ၌ ေရနံဓာတု စက္႐ုံကဲ့သို႔ေသာ စက္မႈဇုန္မ်ားေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ပြားေနေသာ က်န္းမာေရး၊ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ေရးရာ ျပႆနာမ်ား၊ ရသင့္ ရထိုက္ေသာ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ားကုိ ေတာင္းဆိုျခင္းမ်ား၊ စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကုိ တရားစြဲဆိုျခင္း စေသာ ျပႆနာမ်ား ၂၀၁၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္တြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရွိရသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ စီမံကိန္းအေပၚ ထား၀ယ္ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ား၏ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကျငာခ်က္

2011-12-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

၁၅ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၂၀၁၁

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ကို တနသၤာရီတိုင္းေဒသႀကီး၊ ထား၀ယ္ခရိုင္၊ ေရျဖဴၿမိဳ႕နယ္အတြင္းရွိ နဘုလယ္ေဒသတြင္ တည္ေဆာက္ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္လွ်က္ရွိပါသည္။ ၎ေဒသသည္ အေရွ႕ေတာင္အာရွတြင္ အႀကီးဆံုးေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း ျဖစ္လာမည္ဟုသိရၿပီး ေဒသတြင္း ကုန္သြယ္ေရးႏွင့္ သယ္ယူပို႔ေဆာင္ေရးအတြက္ အခ်က္အခ်ာက်ေသာေနရာ ျဖစ္လာမည့္အျပင္ ၎အထူး စီးပြားေရးဇုန္အတြင္းရွိ ျပည္သူမ်ားအတြက္ အလုပ္အကိုင္အခြင့္အလမ္းမ်ား ပိုမိုဖန္တီးေပးရန္ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ျဖင့္ တည္ေဆာက္လွ်က္ရွိသည္ဟုသိရပါသည္။

နဘုလယ္ေဒသဆိုသည္မွာ ထား၀ယ္တို႔၏ရိုးရာအစဥ္အလာဓေလ့မ်ား၊ ထား၀ယ္မူရင္းစကား၊ သမိုင္း၀င္ေစတီဘုရားမ်ား၊ ေရွးၿမိဳ႕ေဟာင္းမ်ား စေသာတန္ဖိုးမျဖတ္ႏိုင္သည့္ သမိုင္းအေမြအႏွစ္မ်ား တစ္စုတည္းရွိေနေသးေသာ ေနရာျဖစ္သည္။ အိမ္ေျခရာခ်ီရွိေသာရြာႀကီးမ်ား၊ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ လူမႈစီးပြားရပ္တည္မႈအတြက္ အေထာက္အပံ့ျဖစ္ေစသည့္ ႂကြယ္၀ေသာ သဘာ၀ပါတ္၀န္းက်င္ အရင္းအျမစ္မ်ား ျပည့္စံုေသာေနရာတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည္။ စီမံကိန္းႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ေသာ တရား၀င္စာ ရင္းမ်ားအရ နဘုလယ္ေဒသတြင္ တည္ေဆာက္မည့္ ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ဧရိယာသည္ ၂၅၀ စတုရန္းကီလိုမီတာက်ယ္၀န္းၿပီး ၎နယ္နိမိတ္အတြင္း ရြာေပါင္းႏွစ္ဆယ္၀န္းက်င္ႏွင့္ လူဦးေရ သံုးေသာင္းႏွစ္ေထာင္ေက်ာ္ ေနထိုင္လွ်က္ ရွိပါသည္။ မိမိတို႔ေဒသခံမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္အထူးစီးပြားေရး ဇုန္စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ လမ္းပန္း ဆက္သြယ္ေရး၊ ပညာေရး၊ က်န္းမာေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး တိုးတက္မႈမ်ားျဖစ္ေပၚလာမည္ဟု ေမွ်ာ္လင့္သည့္အျပင္ တိုင္းျပည္ႏွင့္ေဒသအတြက္လည္း ေရရွည္တည္တံ့ေသာဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္မႈ ျဖစ္ေစလိုပါသည္။ သို႔ရာတြင္ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ား ေထာင္ေသာင္းခ်ီ၍ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရမည္ဆိုပါက ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ တည္ၿငိမ္အေျခက် ေနေသာဘ၀မ်ား အသစ္မွျပန္စရမည္ျဖစ္သကဲ့သို႔ မိမိတို႔ေဒသတြင္းရွိ ယံုၾကည္ကိုးကြယ္မႈမ်ား၊ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈမ်ား၊ အတည္တက် ျဖစ္ေနေသာ အသက္ေမြးမႈမ်ား၊ ယခုအခ်ိန္ထိက်န္ရွိေနေသးေသာ လူနည္းစုမ်ားအား အနည္းႏွင့္အမ်ားဆိုသလို ထိခိုက္သက္ေရာက္ေစမည္ကို စိုးရိမ္မိၾကသည့္နည္းတူ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ား၏ ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္မႈႏွင့္ ဆႏၵသေဘာထားမ်ားကိုအေျခခံ၍ စီမံကိန္းအားေဖာ္ေဆာင္ပါက စစ္မွန္ေကာင္းမြန္ေသာ ေရရွည္တည္တံ့သည့္ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈရရွိမည္ဟု ယံုၾကည္ပါသည္။

ထား၀ယ္အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္အတြင္း ျပည္ပမွလာေရာက္ရင္းႏွီးျမဳပ္ႏွံမည့္ လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားတြင္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုး လွ်ပ္စစ္ဓါတ္အားေပးစက္ရံု၊ ေရနံဓါတုအေျချပဳစက္ရံုမ်ားႏွင့္ အျခားေသာအလားတူ စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား တည္ေဆာက္မည္ဟုလည္း သိရွိရပါသည္။ ၎စက္ရံုမ်ားေၾကာင့္ သဘာ၀ ပါတ္၀န္းက်င္ႏွင့္ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏က်န္းမာေရးကိုမထိခိုက္ေစရန္ႏွင့္ ေရရွည္တည္တံ့ေစေသာဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈကို ျဖစ္ေစမည့္ ရင္းႏွီးျမဳပ္ႏွံမႈမ်ားျဖစ္ေစရန္ ေဒသခံမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ဆႏၵရွိပါသည္။

မိမိတို႔ေဒသခံမ်ားအေနျဖင့္လည္း မိမိတို႔တိုင္းျပည္ႏွင့္ေဒသေကာင္းက်ိဳးအတြက္ အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္ေနေသာ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေရးစီမံကိန္းတြင္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစိုးရ၊ စီမံကိန္းအေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္ ဆႏၵရွိၾကပါသည္။ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ ၎ေဒသရွိေက်းရြာမ်ားမွ ေဒသခံမ်ားကိုုိ ထား၀ယ္ေဒသဖြ႕ံၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕(Dawei Development Association) မွ ေလ့လာေမးျမန္းခဲ့ၿပီး ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းႏွင့္ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ႏွင့္ပက္သက္ေသာ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏သေဘာထားမ်ားကို ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကျငာအပ္ပါသည္။
(၁) မိမိတို႔ေဒသ၊ တိုင္းျပည္သာမက အျခားႏိုင္ငံေပါင္းမ်ားစြာမွ ျပည္သူမ်ားအတြက္ပါ အက်ိဳးရွိေစမည့္ စီမံကိန္းႀကီးျဖစ္ေစရန္ဆႏၵရွိၿပီး ေရရွည္တည္တံ့ေသာ၊ စိမ္းလန္းေသာဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈ (Sustainable Green Development) အေပၚအေျချပဳေသာ စီမံကိန္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္ေစရန္။
(၂) စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ရမႈမ်ားရွိပါက ေဒသခံမ်ား၏အသက္ေမြးမႈႏွင့္ ဘ၀တည္ၿငိမ္မႈမ်ား မပ်က္စီးေစရန္ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ား၏ ဆႏၵသေဘာထားမ်ားအားေတာင္းခံကာ ၎တို႔အေပၚ အေျချပဳ၍ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ေစလိုပါသည္။ စီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ နယ္ေျမမ်ားကို မထိခိုက္ေစလိုဘဲ ေဒသခံတုိ႔၏ အိမ္ၿခံ၊ လယ္ေျမ၊ ဥယ်ာဥ္ျခံေျမမ်ား ထိခိုက္မႈရွိမည္ဆုိပါက နစ္နာမႈႏွင့္ညီမွ်ေသာ တန္ဖိုးရွိသည့္ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးအား ကာယကံရွင္ ျပည္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ ၫႇိႏိႈင္းကာ တိက်ေသာပမာဏ၊ အခ်ိန္ကာလ သတ္မွတ္ေပးရန္။
(၃) ျပည္ပမွလာေရာက္ ရင္းႏွီးျမဳပ္ႏွံမႈမ်ားသည္ သဘာ၀ပါတ္၀န္းက်င္ႏွင့္ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ က်န္းမာေရးကို မထိခိုက္ေစေသာ လုပ္ငန္းအမ်ိဳးအစားမ်ား ျဖစ္ေစလိုေသာေၾကာင့္ စီမံကိန္း မစတင္မီ သဘာ၀ပါတ္၀န္း က်င္ထိခိုက္မႈဆိုင္ရာ ေလ့လာခ်က္ (Environmental Impact Accessment - EIA) ႏွင့္ လူမႈေရးထိခိုက္မႈ ဆိုင္ရာေလ့လာခ်က္(Social Impact Accessment - SIA) မ်ားကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရွိ တသီးပုဂၢလိက ပညာရွင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ ပညာရွင္မ်ား ပူးေပါင္း လုပ္ေဆာင္ေစလိုၿပီး ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ားအား ျပန္လည္ ရွင္းလင္း အသိေပး ၫႇိႏိႈင္းရန္။
(၄) ေရရွည္တည္တံ့ေသာ၊ စိမ္းလန္းေသာဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးမႈ (Sustainable Green Development) ျဖစ္ေစရန္ လြတ္လပ္သည့္ အရပ္ဖက္လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား၊ NGOမ်ား၊ ကမၻာ့ကုလသမဂၢ အဖဲြ႕အစည္းမ်ားႏွင့္ သက္ဆုိင္ရာအာဏာပိုင္အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား၊ စီမံကိန္း အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္သူမ်ားအၾကား ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားမ်ားႏွင့္ ဆႏၵသေဘာထားမ်ားအား ၫႇိႏိႈင္းေျပာဆိုေဆြးေႏြး တိုင္ပင္ခြင့္မ်ား ရွိေစရန္ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ ဆႏၵကို ေဖၚျပ ေတာင္းဆိုအပ္ပါသည္။

ထား၀ယ္ေဒသဖြ႕ံၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးအဖြဲ႕
DDA (Dawei Development Association)

Italian-Thai Employees Briefly Kidnapped

2011-12-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

A number of employees for the Italian-Thai Development Company (ITD) were kidnapped and 16 vehicles were hijacked for several hours on Tuesday by five armed men in eastern Tavoy.

Calling themselves the BBK, the armed gang released the hostages and vehicles a few hours later, but only after extorting 10,000 baht [US $300] from the workers, according to Eh Na, the editor of Thailand-based Karen news agency, Kwekalu who said he met with the hostages on Wednesday.

The employees were said to be mostly Thai and were working on road construction for the multimillion-dollar Dawei Development Project.

“In addition to the workers, the armed gang seized 16 trucks and three satellite walkie-talkies. They also extorted 10,000 baht in cash from the hostages,” said Eh Na. “They were all released at midday.”

The five armed men allegedly told the ITD employees that they each had to pay another 1,000 baht if they wanted to continue working on the project, the road construction phase of which is to link the industrial plant in Tavoy in Tenasserim Division to Thailand's Kanchanaburi.

Although Burmese government troops and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Brigade 4 are both active in the Tennaserim area, early indications are that the five armed men were not affiliated with any one armed group in particular.

Saw Kwe Htoo Win, the chairman of Mergui-Tavoy District for the Karen National Union [the KNLA's political arm], said the ITD had informed the KNU about the incident and that it was investigating who was behind the kidnapping.

“We certainly did not order our troops to do such a thing,” he said. “But we are checking into the incident.”

The KNU warned in July that road construction on the project should be stopped after local villagers complained that it would have a severe negative impact on the local population and the environment. Displaced villagers also said that they have not been compensated for the loss of their land and homes which were confiscated to make way for the mega-project.

In July, some 50 workers from the ITD fled from Tavoy to the Thai side of the border to escape fighting Burmese government troops and Karen rebels.

ITD's contract on the Dawei Development Project was approved in March 2010 by the Burmese military government. With an estimated cost of $60 billion, the industrial project will include a deep-sea port, a giant industrial zone, roads, railways, transmission lines, and oil and gas pipelines.

Thaksin behind PM's Burma trip

2011-12-20T02:14:00.000-08:00

Ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra confirmed yesterday he travelled to Burma last week to help smooth the way for his sister, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, to visit and said the move would benefit Thailand.

The meeting today between Ms Yingluck and Burma's pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is symbolic of democracy and the cordial relations Thailand and Burma have enjoyed, he said.

Thaksin told the Bangkok Post in an exclusive interview by phone from Dubai he travelled to Burma last Thursday and visited Burmese President Thein Sein and former president Than Shwe.

Thaksin admitted he helped smooth the way for Ms Yingluck to visit and meet Mrs Suu Kyi.

Thaksin said the meeting of the two political leaders has significant implications and shows two things.

First, allowing Ms Yingluck to meet Mrs Suu Kyi means Burma attaches a great deal of importance to Thailand. It is the first time a Thai leader has met the democracy icon. Burma has never allowed the leaders of other countries to hold such a meeting before, Thaksin said.

Second, the world community will also know Thailand has advocated and promoted democracy vigorously and that Burma considers Thailand as its most important neighbour.

"Relations between Thailand and Burma have never faded since my time. I never used a stick to deal with Burma like the superpowers did. I always used a carrot to deal with it," Thaksin said.

He also said when he was prime minister, he once offered Burma an opportunity to use Bangkok as a venue to draw up its constitution and gave Burma a chance to explain itself to western countries with the goal of them lifting sanctions on the country.

Ms Yingluck yesterday left Bangkok for Burma's capital Naypyidaw to attend the 4th General Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) Summit to discuss development of land transport in the region before visiting Rangoon, where she will meet Mrs Suu Kyi.

The GMS comprises Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos,Vietnam and China.

At the meeting, three memorandums of understanding (MoUs) will be signed. They comprise the Joint Cooperation in Further Accelerating the Construction of the Information Superhighway and its Applications in GMS, the Joint Action to Reduce HIV Vulnerability Related to Population Movement, and the Establishment of the GMS Freight Transporters Association.

Previously, a government source said the government would use the occasion of Ms Yingluck's two-day Burma visit to hold separate meetings with Burmese officials and investors to discuss transport and energy development projects.

Thailand plans to buy natural gas and invest in construction of a transport system linking the Dawei industrial complex in southern Burma with the west of Thailand.

But critics fear the Yingluck government's plan to open transport and energy talks with Burma might benefit Thaksin's cronies.

When Thaksin was prime minister between 2001 and 2004, the government took a special interest in investing in land transport, energy and telecommunications development in Burma.

The former premier ordered the Foreign Ministry to help Burma secure a 4 billion baht loan from the Export-Import Bank of Thailand to buy equipment from his telecoms empire.

Thaksin said yesterday that after the GMS meeting Thailand would gain benefits from Burma, including more gas field development deals.

Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan, who is accompanying Ms Yingluck to Burma, said PTT Plc executives have also joined the trip to hold talks on oil and gas exploration.

The Burmese government is offering licences for exploration and production firms to drill onshore and offshore.

PTT Exploration and Production Plc is seeking licences for an onshore petroleum block as well as the MD7 and MD8 offshore gas blocks in the Gulf of Martaban, Mr Pichai said.

If Burma awards the concessions to the company, this would help boost Thailand's energy security, he said.

Government spokesman Thitima Chaisaeng said Ms Yingluck would take the opportunity to get to know Mrs Suu Kyi. It was a good chance for the two female leaders to exchange views on Mrs Suu Kyi's role in the pursuit of democracy.

The prime minister will also ask Mrs Suu Kyi to visit Thailand if and when she is allowed to leave Burma in the future, Ms Thitima said.

Meanwhile, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS) at Chulalongkorn University and an expert on international relations, said Ms Yingluck's visit was well-timed given the flurry of recent positive developments in Burma. Her visit comes at a time when reform and dialogue are gaining momentum in Burma.

"If Burma continues with a transition from military rule to democratic reform, Thailand will not want to miss the train. The democracy train in Burma bodes well for Ms Yingluck's democracy credentials," Mr Thitinan said.

Most importantly, he said, Burma is now Thailand's energy lifeline and a longstanding source of labour for the Thai economy.

Thai investments in Dawei also underscored Burma's crucial role in boosting Thailand's future economic growth, he said.

bangkokpost.com

Petrochemical based plants in Dawei SEZ will hazard residents

2011-12-20T02:10:00.001-08:00

A coal-fired power plant, petrochemical industries and similar factories will be constructed in emerging Dawei Special Economic Zone which is being implemented in Yephyu Township of Dawei District in Thaninthari Region. As a result, these industries will turn out health hazard to local people and will have negative impacts on the environment.

This 250 square kilometer massive project is established by the Italian-Thai Development Co., Ltd with 75 year-contract.

U Soe Thein from Dawei Township, said, “Local residents do not have knowledge about advantages and disadvantages of this project. Coal-fired power in this project may cause health hazards to them. They should be informed about it.”

Dawei Special Economic Zone was allowed by the previous government in accordance with ‘The Myanmar Special Economic Zone Law’. Paragraph number 5 of this law states that ‘The Special Economic Zone includes high tech industrial zones, information and telecommunications technology zones, export processing zones, port area zones, logistics and transportation zones, scientific and technological four research and development zones, service business zones, sub-trading zones and zones prescribed by the Government, from time to time."

Ko Thant Zin from this area said, “The suspended factories from Map Ta Phut will be relocated from Thailand to Myanmar. South central Thailand on the shores of the Gulf of Thailand experienced air and water pollution. The risk of cancer diseases increased three folds, and that of blood cancers five folds than other areas.”

Dawei Deep Sea Port and Special Economic Zone will engulf 29 villages of Yephyu Township in Thanintharyi Region.

Ko Thant Zin said, “The coal-fired power plant in this project will generate 4,000 megawatts. It was learnt that surplus electricity from this zone will be sold to Thailand.”

The project will include chemical industries, petrochemical factories, paint factories, rubber factories and foodstuff industries. These factories require many chemicals in their manufacturing processes. As these chemicals can pollute air, water and soil in this area, they should be discharged systematically.

Residents from Map Ta Phut area demanded their rights and filed lawsuits against those factories in 2010 for health hazards and environmental impacts caused by those industries.

Myanmar invites investment in more special economic zone project

2011-12-19T07:37:00.001-08:00

YANGON, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar is inviting local and foreign investment in the Thilawa special economic zone project next to the Dawei Special Economic Zone project, aimed at developing the country's economy.

Thilawa special economic zone lies between Thanlyin and Kyauktan townships in Yangon region.

"Steps will be taken for Myanmar nationals to be able to establish a public company in the southern area of Kyauktan township in partnership with a foreign company on joint-venture basis," said the authorities.

"Necessary measures will also be taken for those investors from Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and other countries or those from Myanmar may invest directly by themselves or on a joint venture basis in the area chosen for establishing Thilawa Industrial Zone," it said.

In the implementation of the project, the authorities assured that only the squatter are to be replaced and the existing villages will not be displaced and particular vacant land will only be used, adding that with the development of special economic zone , those villages can be turned into residential areas with modern buildings.

The authorities went on to say that investors concerned will coordinate with consultants to ensure that the livelihood of the local people are not affected, disclosing that "The third party chosen by the Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry will be assigned to see to the impact on the natural environment".

Earlier, the Dawei Special Economic Zone project in southern Tanintharyi region has been planned with the building of a deep- sea port where 100,000-ton vessels can be moored to although only about 20,000-ton vessels could enter the Yangon river course in the past.

The Dawei deep-sea port project is being carried out by Myanmar and Thailand under the two countries' framework agreement signed between the Myanmar Port Authority and the Italian-Thai Development Public Company in November 2010. The agreement also covers the projects of industrial zone, road and rail link to Thailand.

The Dawei deep seaport, industrial zone and road and rail link to Thailand construction project represents the first ever special economic zone in Myanmar.

The project, which costs 13 billion U.S dollars, includes construction of Dawei Deep Seaport, buildings for shipyard and maintenance work, establishment of zone, petrochemical industries, oil refinery, steel plant, power stations and Dawei-Bangkok motor road and railroad and laying of oil pipeline along the motorway and railroad, according to the framework agreement.

The project is targeted to complete in 10 years in three phases under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) system.

Similarly, Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone project will soon be implemented, according to the auhorities.

Myanamr's previous government promulgated the Special Economic Zone Law in January this year, three months before the new governemnt came into being.

The law comprises 12 chapters covering formation of central body, special privileges of investor, land use, bank and finance management and insurance business as well as quarantine inspection and confinement and matters related to labor.

The enactment of the special economic zone law came 23 years after Myanmar promulgated its first foreign investment law in November 1988, the amendment of which is underway in the parliament.

Meanwhile, Myanmar also designated 24 development zones in the country, carrying out major projects.

In the industrial sector, it has set up 18 industrial zones across the country to encourage private sector to run industrial enterprises for the development of the sector. So far, a total of 9,574 private industrial enterprises are in operation there.

The 18 local industrial zones are Hlaingthaya, Shwepyitha, Shwelinpan, Shwepaukkan, North Okkalapa, South Okkalapa, Dagon Seikkan, East Dagon, South Dagon, North Dagon, Thakata, Mingaladong, Yangon, Wartayar, Pyin Mapyin, Thatukan, Thit Ahchaykan and Myaungdakar.

In the latest development, five more industrial zones are planned in five states in the country in addition to the existing ones.

Inviting foreign investment, the five new industrial zones are to be built in Kayin state's Hpa-an, Mon state's Phaya Thongzu, Shan state's Namphaka and Muse, and Rakhine state's Ponnagyun.

Myanmar's industrial sector contributes about 20 percent to the gross domestic product and private sector's contribution to the industrial sector stood 92.36 percent, statistics show.

In time of the the new government which assumed office on March 30, 2011, foreign investment rose 19.3 million U.S. dollars, bringing the total to 36.073 billion dollars from 31 countries and regions in 454 projects as of August 2011 since November 1988 when Myanmar's Foreign Investment Law was enacted.

by Feng Yingqiu

Dawei port: villagers protest land confiscation

2011-12-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Residents of 19 villages who are being forced to relocate because of Burma’s massive Dawei (Tavoy) deep-sea port development project are protesting their eviction notices and unfair compensation.

A press conference, organized by the Dawei Development Group, an advocate for the villagers, was held on Thursday in Bahan Township in Rangoon to air the villagers’ complaints.

About 100 people showed up for the press conference including writers Maung Wun Tha and Ko Tar, Myanmar Bird and Nature Society environmentalist Soe Nyunt and local journalists.

Spokesmen said that Mayingyi and Kaloathta villages had been bulldozed for the project. The Dawei deep-sea port is 10 times larger than Laem Chabang, Thailand’s largest port.

Abbot U Awbatha of Mayingyi Monastery in Yebyu Township, Taninthayi Region, told Mizzima that many of the villagers have carefully cultivated coconut palms, which could support them and their heirs for their entire lives.

One villager said, “Even if the authorities give compensation, we cannot depend on the compensation for our whole life. We cannot give the compensation to our next generations as inheritances. We don’t want to move.”

The Italian-Thai Development Company is leading the massive port project. According to figures compiled by the Dawei Development Group, 32,279 people, 21 schools and 23 religious buildings from a total of 19 villages must be relocated because of the project, which is located near Nhapholel village in Yebyu Township, 20 miles northwest of Dawei.

“They told the villages they must move, but I want to urge the villagers who must move and the authorities to negotiate,’” said a Buddhist monk, Pyinnya Wuntha, of Kaloat village in Yebyu Township. In November, village heads conducted a survey that found that almost all the residents did not want to leave their homes.

In 2008, Burma and the Italian-Thai Development Company signed a memorandum of understanding. In 2010, the company signed a “framework” agreement to develop the project and it was granted a 75-year concession.

The project has three phases: the first stage extends from 2010 to 2014, the second stage extends from 2014 until 2017 and the third phase will be implemented from 2015 to 2019. Construction of an electric power plant, oil plant and steel plant are included in the project.

The estimated cost is a total of US $58 billion; the first phase is funded at $8 billion

The massive project includes a 170-kilometre, eight-lane highway that will link Dawei to Kanchanburi, Thailand, a railroad, gas pipelines, and the creation of a designated economic zone on the Burmese-Thai border.

Thant Zin, who has worked with local residents, told Mizzima. “To supply water for the port facilities, a reservoir will be built in Taloathta village and an area about 4-square kilometres will be flooded.” He said a two-lane road along the projected eight-lane super highway that will link up with Thailand is about 90 per cent complete.

To build the road, farmland in Ashaytaw, Kaloanhtaw and Nabu villages was bulldozed without giving compensation to the landowners, according to residents.

“Not giving compensations to the residents is bullying,” environmentalist U Ohn told the press conference period.

In October, plantation owners around Yebyu and Mindat villages were forced to sign agreements for the confiscation of 123.5 acres of plantations located in the designated zone. At that time, the official in charge of the port, Khin Maung Swe, was quoted as saying, “If you don’t agree, your plantations will be confiscated without any compensation.”

Construction plans also call for a coal-fired power plant that could generate 4,000 megawatts of power to be built to service the port and economic zone, which could damage the environment, said environmentalist Win Myo Thu.

According to the Dawei Development Group, the Italian-Thai Development Company promised to create job opportunities for local residents, but salaries are lower than ordinary rates and workers have many complaints.

“The salaries of Burmese workers and the salaries of Thai workers are different,” said Thant Zin. “Some Burmese women have become mistresses of Thai workers. The number of migrant workers is increasing, so there is more crime in the area. There are many problems.”

Tavoy natives express concerns on deep-sea port construction

2011-12-17T08:19:00.000-08:00

Local residents in southern Burma’s Tenasserim Division who are facing possible relocation to make way for Dawei [Tavoy] deep-sea port project construction held a press conference in Rangoon yesterday.

The conference’s aim was to publicise their demands, to ensure safetyfor the natural environment, and an adequate sum of compensation if they have to abandon their homes and farmlands.

Speakers at the conference and residents in Tavoy and nearby villages who call themselves Dawei Region Development Group, told journalists their demands at Royal Rose Restaurant in Shwegondai township on December 15. They said they would like guidelines to be specified based on the local public’s opinion established through surveys, they want to ensure protection for their livelihood and cultural heritage sites, and to ensure an appropriate amount of compensation for those who face relocation.

They also demanded for an environment and health-impact survey to be conducted by an independent organisation, and its findings to be publicised. And they asked to keep a communication channel between Non-Government Organisations, authorities, United Nations groups and the locals for a sustainable and long-term development project.

Abbot monk of Mayamingyi village in Tavoy Distrct, who was among some 100 people attending the press conference, said his village is already witnessing some destruction of natural environment as the construction begins to roll in.

“They are bulldozing the hill-strip next to our village from all sides and we used to find vegetables for food up there. And our cashew nut plantations were also destroyed by a costal-road construction. The villagers did not receive any compensation for that and they are disappointed,” said the monk.

“Apparently the locals might also have to move [from the villages] but they don’t want that – they don’t want the compensation either. They just want their trees.”

Dawei deep-sea port is a multi-billion dollar project being developed by Thailand based construction company Italian-Thai Industrial Company Limited. The 10-year project looks to transform the region into a Special Economic Zone and includes development of a large, 250 square kilometre industrial zone for heavy industry and petro-chemical plants. In November 2010, Burmese government’s Myanmar Port Authority signed an 8.6 billion US dollar contract with Ital-thai, giving it green-light to go ahead with the project.

In June this year, Ital-thai said around 10,000 people would have to be relocated to make way for the development.

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း တည္ေဆာက္မည့္ ကမ္းေျခ တစ္ေလွ်ာက္ ေျမစမ္းသပ္တုိင္းတာ

2011-12-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း တည္ေဆာက္မည့္ ကမ္းေျခတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ ေျမစမ္းသပ္တုိင္းတာ
ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း တည္ေဆာက္မည့္ ကမ္းေျခတစ္ေလ်ာက္ ေအာက္ခံေျမသားႏႇင့္ ပတ္သက္ ၿပီး ေျမစမ္းသပ္တုိင္းတာျခင္းမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္လ်က္ရႇိေၾကာင္း ဘူမိအင္ဂ်င္နီယာမ်ားထံမႇ သိရႇိရသည္။

''ထား၀ယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းမႇာ ကမ္းေျခတစ္ေလ်ာက္ ဆိပ္ကမ္းတည္ေဆာက္မယ့္ ေျမေနရာေတြမႇာ ေျမသားတုိင္းတာျခင္း လုပ္ငန္းေတြကို ျပည္တြင္းကုမၸဏီတစ္ခုက ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနပါတယ္။ ဆိပ္ကမ္းအတြက္ ေအာက္ခံေျမသားက ေက်ာက္အမ်ဳိးအစားကို တုိင္းၾကတယ္။ ေအာက္ခံေက်ာက္က မာလား၊ အက္ကြဲေၾကာင္း ရႇိ မရႇိ၊ ေနာက္ၿပီးေရစိမ့္တာႏႈန္းက ဘယ္ေလာက္လဲစသျဖင့္ တုိင္းတာေရးလုပ္ငန္းေတြကို ျပဳလုပ္ေန ၾကတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္''ဟု ထား၀ယ္ေရ နက္ဆိပ္ကမ္း တည္ေဆာက္ေရးစီမံကိန္းႏႇင့္ နီးစပ္သူတစ္ဦးက ေျပာျပခဲ့သည္။

အလားတူ စီမံကိန္းကိန္း ဧရိယာအတြင္း လမ္းၾကမ္းမ်ား ေဖာက္လုပ္ျခင္းလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို ယခုအခါေဆာင္ရြက္လ်က္ရႇိေၾကာင္း လည္း သိရႇိရသည္။

ထို့ျပင္ လုပ္ငန္းခြင္အတြင္းႏႇင့္ ဆိပ္ကမ္းစီမံကိန္းအတြက္ reservior construction(ေရခ်ဳိသိုေလႇာင္ကန္) တည္ေဆာက္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ား ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနျခင္းႏႇင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ''ဒီလုပ္ငန္းငန္းခြင္အတြင္းနဲ႔ ဆိပ္ကမ္း စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ေရာ၊ စီမံကိန္းၿပီးသြားလို႔ ဆိပ္ကမ္းကိုကပ္လာမယ့္ သေဘၤာေတြအတြက္ပါ ေရခ်ဳိေတြ ေပးဖို႔အတြက္ reservior construction(ေရခ်ဳိ သိုေလႇာင္ကန္)ကို တလုိင္းရေက်းရြာ တလိုင္းရေခ်ာင္းမႇာ တည္ေဆာက္ေနပါတယ္''ဟု လည္း ဘူမိအင္ဂ်င္နီယာတစ္ဦးက ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။

Fighting flares near Tavoy project

2011-12-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

Soldiers from the KNLA have actively resisted the
Tavoy deep-sea port project (Francis Wade)

Clashes have erupted along a key overland route that will link the Tavoy deep-sea port megaproject in southern Burma to Southeast Asian economies, once again highlighting the volatility of large-scale infrastructural ventures in Burma.

Burmese troops have been stationed along several locations between the port and the Thai border where work is underway to build a multi-lane highway to the town of Kachanaburi, and then on to Bangkok.

Fighting broke out on Tuesday last week close to the town of Myitta, through which the road will pass.

Territory controlled by the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)’s Brigade 4 lies close to the region of Tavoy that is being transformed into Southeast Asia’s largest industrial complex, and the group has actively opposed the project: Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the KNLA’s political wing, the Karen National Union (KNU), told Karen News Group in July that companies that did not get the group’s permission to enter the region “will be regarded as military dictatorship-backed companies”.

The clash last week, which erupted after a landmine was detonated by the KNLA close to a Burmese army battalion, lasted only 10 minutes, but resulted in several casualties. “The enemy suffered three injuries: a private and two corporals,” said a KNLA Brigade 4 spokesperson. “I don’t know whether there was any death or not.”

He said the Burmese battalion, in a bid to send those injured in the clash to a nearby outpost, had forced civilians to porter supplies and blocked many from attending their farms around Myitta.

Similar clashes in July close to a construction workers’ camp forced 50 workers from the Thai engineering giant behind the project, Ital-Thai, to flee into Thailand.

Despite efforts to negotiate a ceasefire with several armed groups, the Burmese army is increasing its presence in the country’s southern Tenasserim division where the port is being built. It will house petrochemical plants, fertiliser factories and a steel mill, and is expected to cover up to 200 square-kilometres of land. According to the Bangkok Post, the vast deep-sea will be able to accommodate 55 vessels at once.

Ital-Thai said earlier this year that at least 10,000 people would be forcibly relocated. Local sources have told DVB the total number of those affected could be closer to 30,000. The effect on the local environment could also be significant, with a 3,000 MW coal-fired power plant also due for construction.

“Previously, [the Burmese army] had only two battalions in this region but that has now increased to five,” said the KNLA spokesperson. “Since they are increasing troop numbers and entering our territory, we have to fight them back.”

In November, a KNU delegation met with Burmese officials in northwestern Thailand to attempt to formulate a truce. The talks broke down, however, and three days later clashes took place further north in Karen state. A similar stab at a ceasefire on 7 December also failed to net a result.

ITD firms Dawei project

2011-12-13T08:01:00.000-08:00

Steel mill estimate runs to B300bn

Italian-Thai Development expects to allot 40,000 rai of industrial land in Burma's Dawei project next year, with plans calling for a 300-billion-baht steel mill, says ITD president Premchai Karnasuta.

The industrial estate will also comprise a fertiliser factory and petrochemical refineries. The basic infrastructure for industrial use is expected to be completed and ready to operate in 2015.

Mr Premchai said the steel mill would sit on 12,000 rai of land, with an investment of as much as 300 billion baht, and ITD would have a Japanese partner.

The mill would have a production capacity of 10 million tonnes per year, and also make downstream products for industrial and electronic uses.

Separately, ITD is negotiating with the national energy flagship, PTT, in an oil-and-gas venture.

The company previously succeeded in selling 3,000 rai of land to Ratchaburi Holding for building power plants, with revenue to be realised in 2012.

Mr Premchai said land prices in the Dawei project were on par with those in Map Ta Phut in eastern Thailand. But Dawei will include a deep-sea port that can serve a large bulk weight of 80,000 tonnes and 55 vessels at once.

Construction is completed on a 132-kilometre road from Thailand to Dawei. The first phase of the deep-sea port is expected to begin soon and conclude in the next four years, with all infrastructure in the area to be finished within a decade.

ITD has been seeking investment partners since the Burmese government granted it a 75-year concession on 160,000 rai in Dawei. It arranged roadshows in China, Japan, South Korea, India and elsewhere. ITD's investment in the project is projected to be about US$8 billion.

According to an industry source, PTT will partner with ITD in a 3,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Dawei. The investment value of the plant is seen as high as $4 billion. The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand is a potential buyer of power output from the plant.

Cement and paper plants are also planned for Dawei, Mr Premchai said.

Shares of ITD closed on Friday on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at 3.84 baht, down 4 satang, in trade worth 335.7 million baht.

Environmentalists Voice Concerns about Tavoy

2011-12-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

Speaking about the Tavoy Deep Seaport after a fact-finding mission held a meeting on Friday in Sanghklaburi, Thailand, the chairman of the Foundation for Ecological Recovery said that he is worried about the environmental impact of building the massive seaport.

“We want to know how much opportunity the local Tavoy residents have to participate in the project,” said Beerawat Dheeraprasart. “We also want to know how many of the residents understand the impact on the environment. This is important because they are the ones who are going to suffer from it.”

The Foundation for Ecological Recovery reported that the Thai Investment Board has offered a substantial sum of money to build the Tavoy Deep Seaport and Industrial Zone. Meanwhile, some 4,000 megawatts of electrical power are required to run the industrial zone, which includes a coal facility that experts say will severely impact the environment and the livelihoods of local people.

“They are going to use water from the sea,” said Beerawat. “Then, the refuse water from the plants will be deposited back into the sea. All marine life will soon be extinct.”

The Burmese and Thai governments agreed in May 2008 a contract to begin construction on the Technical Zone in Tavoy Deep seaport.

The project is eight times bigger than the Map Ta Phut Industrial Zone in Rayong, Thailand, which is run by the same company, according to the Foundation for Ecological Recovery.

Map Tha Phut is estimated to have cost some 370 billion baht (US $10.5 billion) while the Tavoy project is estimated at around 303 billion baht ($8.6 billion).

Premsak Buawattana, another senior member of the Foundation for Ecological Recovery, said that he is worried for the Burmese people because they could suffer like the local people in Thailand who contracted cancer from poisoned water from the Map Ta Phut project.

“We believe that the Burmese people should know about the impact. This company has already operated in our country,” he said. “Rights activists halted the company working in Thailand. Now they are moving to Burma.”

The Sanghklaburi workshop included Mon human rights activists who reported that the lack of stability and democratic law in Burma is conducive to conditions in Tavoy that will lead to human rights abuses.

According to the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM), about 20 local villages were evacuated by the Burmese authorities in order to make way for the construction of the deep seaport.

Nai Kasauh Mon, the director of the Mon Human Rights Foundation, said, “We are worried that the Burmese authorities will not give compensation to the villagers even though the Italian-Thai company may hand over money to the Burmese authorities.”

Hathuethai Kongkoan, another senior member of the Foundation for Ecological Recovery, said that they intend to educate the villagers about the impact on the environment that this project may have.

After they are aware of the impact, they will fight for their rights,” he said.

ထားဝယ္အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာ့ဖြံ့ၿဖိုး တိုးတက္မႈ

2011-12-06T09:37:00.001-08:00

အညစ္ညမ္းဆံုး လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားထုတ္လုပ္မႈရဲ့ ထားဝယ္သဘာဝဝန္းက်င္အေပၚ က်ေရာက္နိုင္မည့္ အနၲရာယ္မ်ား

ဖြံ့ၿဖိုးဆဲနိုင္ငံတနိုင္ငံရဲ့ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ေတြမွာ နိုင္ငံတကာစက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းႀကီးေတြ လာေရာက္ရင္းႏွီးျမႈပ္ႏွံခ်င္ၾကတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းရင္းက အလုပ္သမားေဈးေပါေပါနဲ့ရရွိရံု၊ အခြန္အထူးကင္းလြတ္ခြင့္ရရွိရံုမ်ွမဟုတ္ဘဲ ထိုနိုင္ငံအစိုးရက စက္မႈ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္မ်ားအလိုက် သဘာဝဝန္းက်င္ဆိုင္ရာ တင္းက်ပ္တဲ့စည္းမ်ဉ္းဥပေဒေတြ မထားရွိတဲ့ အခ်က္ဟာလည္း အဓိကပါဝင္ေနပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံကလည္း အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ေတြ စတင္အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္တဲ့ေနရာမွာ နိုင္ငံျခားရင္းႏွီးျမႈပ္ႏွံမႈေတြကို ဆြဲေဆာင္နိုင္ေရးအတြက္ သဘာဝပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးဆိုင္ရာ စည္းမ်ဉ္းဥပေဒေတြ ျပ႒ာန္းမထားခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္နဲ့ခ်ီၿပီး က်ဆင္းေနတဲ့ စီးပြားေရးကို ျပန္လည္ဦးေမာ့လာဖို့အတြက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ရာမွာ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံဟာ အခုဆိုရင္ အဓိက စီမံကိန္းႀကီး ၃ ခုကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ေနပါတယ္။

အဲ့ဒါေတြကေတာ့ တနသၤာရီတိုင္းေဒသႀကီးမွာ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံကရင္းႏွီးျမႈပ္ႏွံမယ့္ ထားဝယ္ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းနဲ့ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္၊ ရန္ကုန္တိုင္းေဒသႀကီးမွာ ေတာင္ကိုရီးယားနိုင္ငံက ရင္းႏွီးျမႈပ္ႏွံမႈမယ့္ သီလဝါ နိုင္ငံတကာေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းနဲ့ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္၊ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ တရုတ္နိုင္ငံက ရင္းႏွီးျမႈပ္ႏွံမႈမယ့္ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴ ေရနက္ဆိပ္ကမ္းနဲ့ အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္တို့ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

လက္ရွိက်င္းပေနတဲ့ ေနျပည္ေတာ္က ျပည္ေထာင္စုလႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ သဘာဝပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ကို ထိန္းသိမ္းကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရးအတြက္ ဥပေဒတရပ္ျပ႒ာန္းေရး ေဆြးေနြးမႈေတြ ရွိခဲ့ေပမယ့္ သက္ဆိုင္ရာဝန္ႀကီးဌာနက ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္ အေစာပိုင္းကတည္းက ေရးဆြဲထားၿပီးျဖစ္တဲ့ ဥပေဒဟာ အေၾကာင္းအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးေၾကာင့္ ျပ႒ာန္းနိုင္ခဲ့ျခင္းမရွိဘဲ အခုအခါ ေခတ္နဲ့ေလ်ာ္ညီေအာင္ ျပန္လည္ျပင္ဆင္ေနေၾကာင္း လႊတ္ေတာ္ကို အသိေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။

အဲ့ဒါေၾကာင့္ သဘာဝဝန္းက်င္ထိန္းသိမ္းေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရးဥပေဒဟာ ဘယ္အခါမွ ထြက္ေပၚလာနိုင္မလဲဆိုတာ မသိနိုင္သလို ထြက္ေပၚလာမယ့္ ဥပေဒဟာလည္း အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္ေတြမွာ လာေရာက္တည္ေဆာက္မယ့္ စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းႀကီးေတြေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာနိုင္တဲ့ ဓာတုေဗဒအဆိပ္သင့္ ညစ္ညမ္းမႈေတြအတြက္ တိက်တဲ့ စည္းမ်ဉ္းဥပေဒေတြ ျပ႒ာန္းမလား ဆိုတာလည္း ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ရမယ့္ အခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ေလာေလာဆယ္မွာေတာ့ ထားဝယ္အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္မွာ တည္ေဆာက္မယ့္ စက္ရံုေတြထဲက ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးလ်ွပ္စစ္ ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုနဲ့ ဆက္နြယ္လာမယ့္ သဘာဝဝန္းက်င္ညစ္ညမ္းမႈက ရင္ေလးစရာအခ်က္တခုျဖစ္ေနပါၿပီ။ ဒီစီမံကိန္း ကို အဓိကအေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ေနတဲ့ Italian-Thai Development PCL ဟာ နဂိုမူလက မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၄,၀၀၀ ထုတ္လုပ္နိုင္မယ့္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးလ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုတခုကို စီမံကိန္းတည္ရွိရာ ေမာင္းမကန္ကမ္းေျခမွာ တည္ေဆာက္ဖို့ စီစဉ္ခဲ့ေပမယ့္ ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ ထုတ္လုပ္မႈအင္အားကို မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၁၀,၀၀၀ အထိ တိုးျမွင့္ထုတ္လုပ္ဖို့ ေျပာင္းလဲလ်ာထားခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဒီလိုေျပာင္းလဲခဲ့တာလည္း ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံက လိုအပ္တဲ့ လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားအတြက္ နဂိုစီစဉ္ထားတဲ့ မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၄,၀၀၀ ထဲက ၃,၆၀၀ ကို မဟာဓာတ္အားလိုင္းသြယ္တန္းၿပီး ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံကို တင္ပို့မွာျဖစ္တယ္။ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံရဲ့ အဓိကလ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အား ထုတ္ လုပ္ျဖန့္ျဖဴးေနတဲ့ အစိုးရရဲ့ Electricty Generation Authority of Thailand (EGAT) နဲ့ အီတာလ်ွံထိုင္းကုမၸဏီတို့အၾကား လုပ္ငန္းဆိုင္ရာညႇိႏွိဳင္းမႈေတြလုပ္ေနသလို တဖက္မွာလည္း ႀကီးမားတဲ့ စက္မႈဇုန္စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ လိုအပ္တဲ့ လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အား ျဖန့္ေဝနိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ေနာက္ထပ္ မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၆,၀၀၀ ကို တိုးခ်ဲ့ခဲ့တယ္လို့ သံုးသပ္လို့ရပါတယ္။

တကယ္ေတာ့ မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၄,၀၀၀ ထုတ္လုပ္ရင္ပဲ အဲ့ဒီစက္ရံုဟာ အေရွ့ေတာင္အာရွမွာ အႀကီးဆံုး ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံု ျဖစ္ေနပါၿပီ။ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံမွာ လက္ရွိအႀကီးဆံုး ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုတရံုျဖစ္တဲ့ နိုင္ငံရဲ့ အေနာက္ေျမာက္ပိုင္းက လမ္ပန္း (Lampang) ခရိုင္က မယ့္ေမာ့ (Mae Moh) ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးလ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပး စက္ရံုေတာင္မွ မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၂၆၀၀ ေက်ာ္သာ ထုတ္လုပ္နိုင္ပါတယ္။

ဒီေနရာမွာ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံက မယ့္ေမာ့ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးမိုင္းနဲ့ လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ သဘာဝန္းက်င္ ညစ္ညမ္းမႈနဲ့ ေဒသခံျပည္သူေတြရဲ့ ျပည္သူ့က်န္းမာေရးဆိုင္ရာျပႆနာရပ္ေတြကို ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြအေနနဲ့ေရာ ထားဝယ္ေဒသမွာ ေနထိုင္က်တဲ့ ေဒသခံေတြအေနနဲ့ပါ ေလ့လာသိရွိသင့္ပါတယ္။

ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံအေနာက္ေျမာက္ေဒသက မယ့္ေမာ့ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးမိုင္းကို ထိုင္းအစိုးရက ၁၉၅၄ ခုႏွစ္ကတည္းက စတင္တူးေဖာ္ခဲ့ၿပီး ေျမဧက ၉၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္ အက်ယ္အဝန္းရွိတဲ့ ေျမျပင္ေပၚမွာ တူးေဖာ္ထုတ္လုပ္တဲ့ အေရွ့ေတာင္အာရွေဒသမွာ အႀကီးဆံုး ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးမိုင္းတြင္းတခု ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲ့ဒီေက်ာက္မီးေသြးမိုင္းမွာ အာရွဖြံ့ၿဖိုးေရးဘဏ္ကေခ်းေငြ အကူအညီနဲ့ လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံု တည္ေဆာက္တာကို ၁၉၇၂ ခုႏွစ္မွ စတင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ၁၉၇၈ ခုႏွစ္မွာ စက္ရံုကို ၇၅ မီဂၢါဝပ္ စက္တပ္ဆင္အားနဲ့ စတင္လည္ပတ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ပိုင္းႏွစ္ေတြမွာ လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားထုတ္လုပ္မႈကို အဆင့္ဆင့္တိုးခ်ဲ့ခဲ့တာ အခုဆိုရင္ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၃၀ အတြင္း စက္အလံုးေရ ၁၃ လံုး တပ္ဆင္ခဲ့ၿပီး စုစုေပါင္း မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၂၆၀၀ ေက်ာ္အထိ တိုးခ်ဲ့ထုတ္လုပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ ၃ ခုအတြင္းမွာ မယ့္ေမာ့ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးစက္ရံု ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္မွာေနထိုင္ၾကတဲ့ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံရဲ့ ေက်းလက္ေန ျပည္သူေတြ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးက ဖန္တီးလိုက္တဲ့ သဘာဝဝန္းက်င္ညစ္ညမ္းမႈနဲ့ ျပည္သူ့က်န္းမာေရးဆိုင္ရာျပႆနာေတြ ရင္ဆိုင္ခံစားခဲ့ၾကရပံုကို ဘန္ေကာက္အေျခစိုက္ Greenpeace Southeast Asia က သုေတသနျပုၿပီး “Mae Moh: Coal Kills” အစီရင္ခံစာကို ၂၀၀၆ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

အစီရင္ခံစာပါအခ်က္အလက္ေတြအရ မယ့္ေမာ့ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံု စတင္လည္ပတ္ၿပီး ၁၄ ႏွစ္အၾကာ ၁၉၉၂ ခုႏွစ္မွာ စက္အလံုးေရ ၁၁ လံုးေျမာက္ တိုးခ်ဲ့တပ္ဆင္အၿပီး မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၂၀၂၅ အထိ တိုးခ်ဲ့ထုတ္လုပ္လာခ်ိန္မွာ ျပႆနာေတြဟာ မဖံုးဖိနိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္အထင္အရွား ေပၚထြက္လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။

စက္ရံုကေန ေန့စဉ္ထုတ္လႊတ္ေနတဲ့ ဆာဖာဒိုင္ေအာက္ဆိုဒ္ (SO2) ပါဝင္တဲ့ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးျပာေတြေၾကာင့္ ပထမဆံုး စက္ရံုတဝိုက္မွာရွိတဲ့ ေက်းရြာေပါင္း ၄၀ ခန့္က လူေပါင္း ၁၀၀၀ ခန့္ဟာ အသက္ရႉလမ္းေၾကာင္း ဆိုင္ရာ ေရာဂါလကၡဏာ ေတြ စတင္ခံစားၾကရပါေတာ့တယ္။ ဒီလိုျဖစ္ရတာဟာ ဆာဖာဒိုင္ေအာက္ဆိုဒ္ဟာ ေလထုထဲမွာ ရွိသင့္တာထက္ ၅ ဆခန့္ ျမင့္မားေနလို့ဆိုတာ ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့ၾကတယ္။

အစိုးရက ဒါေတြကို မသိက်ိဳးက်ြန္ျပုၿပီး ၁၉၉၆ ခုႏွစ္မွာ စက္တပ္ဆင္အား ၁၃ လံုးအထိ တိုးျမွင့္ခဲ့ၿပီး မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၂၆၂၅ အထိ ထုတ္လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္။ အဲ့ဒီႏွစ္မွာပဲ ေလထုညစ္ညမ္းမႈဟာ အဆိုးရြာဆံုးအဆင့္ကို ေရာက္ခဲ့သလို ေဒသခံ ၆ ဦး ေသြးအဆိပ္သင့္ၿပီး ေသဆံုးတဲ့ျဖစ္ရပ္လည္း ေပၚထြက္လာပါတယ္။ စက္ရံုကို ဝင္ေရာက္စစ္ေဆးလိုက္ေတာ့ ဆာဖာဒိုင္ေအာက္ဆိုဒ္ကို ထိန္းခ်ုပ္တဲ့စနစ္တခုလံုး အလုပ္မလုပ္ဘဲ SO2 ေတြကို ေလထုထဲတိုက္ရိုက္ထုတ္လႊတ္ေနတာ ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

ညံ့ဖ်င္းတဲ့ စက္ရံုစီမံခန့္ခြဲမႈရဲ့ရလဒ္က ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ေက်းရြာေတြက ျပည္သူေတြရဲ့ အသက္ေမြးဝမ္းေၾကာင္းလုပ္ငန္းျဖစ္တဲ့ လယ္ယာသီးႏွံေတြ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးျပာေၾကာင့္ ေလာင္က်ြမ္းပ်က္စီးဆံုးရွံဳးခဲ့ရၿပီး လူမႈဒုကၡေတြကိုပါ ရင္ဆိုင္ခဲ့ရတယ္။ ျပည္သူက်န္းမာေရးပညာရွင္မ်ားက အဲ့ဒီေက်းရြာေတြမွာေနထိုင္ၾကတဲ့ လူဦးေရ ၈၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို က်န္းမာေရး စစ္ေဆး မႈေတြလုပ္ခဲ့ရၿပီး အဲ့ဒီထဲက လူဦးေရ ၃,၅၀၀ ခန့္ဟာ အသက္ရႉလမ္းေၾကာင္းဆိုင္ရာ ေရာဂါေတြခံစားေနရၿပီး တခ်ိဳ့ဆိုရင္ ေအာက္စီဂ်င္ဗူးနဲ့ အသက္ရွင္ေနရတဲ့အထိ ဆိုးဆိုးရြားရြား ခံစားခဲ့ၾကရတယ္။

ဒီလိုခံစားေနရေပမယ့္ အစိုးရဘက္က အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္မႈေတြ ေႏွးေကြးလြန္တဲ့အတြက္ ေဒသခံေတြဟာ ၎တို့အခြင့္အေရးကို ကိုယ္တိုင္ကာကြယ္မွ ရေတာ့မယ္ဆိုတာ သိရွိလာၿပီး ၁၉၉၈ ခုႏွစ္မွာ အစိုးရကို စတင္တရားဆြဲပါေတာ့တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အင္အားနည္းတဲ့ျပည္သူေတြဘက္က မေရရာမႈေတြနဲ့ပဲ အဆံုးသတ္ခဲ့ရတယ္။

တခ်ိဳ့ ေငြေၾကးတတ္နိုင္တဲ့သူေတြက ေဒသကေန စြန့္ခြာခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ မတတ္နိုင္တဲ့ ဆင္းရဲတဲ့ေဒသခံေတြအတြက္ ေရြးစရာလမ္းမရွိဘဲ လူမႈဒုကၡေတြကို ရင္ဆိုင္ခဲ့ၾကရတယ္။ အစိုးရကေတာ့ စက္ရံုကိုပိတ္ပစ္ဖို့ မစဉ္းစားခဲ့ပါဘူး၊ ဒီစက္ရံုက ထြက္ရွိတဲ့ လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားက ထိုင္းစီးပြားေရးကို ေက်ာေထာက္ေနာက္ခံျပုေနတဲ့ တန္ဖိုးက ႀကီးမားေနပါတယ္။

အာရွဖြံ့ၿဖိုးေရးဘဏ္ကလည္း ၎တို့ေခ်းေငြနဲ့ တည္ေဆာက္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုျဖစ္တဲ့အတြက္ ၂၀၀၁ ခုႏွစ္မွာ မယ့္ေမာ့ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ပြားတဲ့ သဘာဝဝန္းက်င္နဲ့ ျပည္သူက်န္းမာေရးဆိုင္ရာ သက္ေရာက္မႈေတြကို ေလ့လာဖို့ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၅ သိန္း ေထာက္ပံ့ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သို့ေပမယ့္ စီးပြားေရးအရေရာ၊ က်န္းမာေရးအရေရာ နစ္နာဆံုးရွံဳးေနၾကတဲ့ ေဒသခံျပည္သူေတြကေတာ့ ဘယ္မွာ နစ္နာေၾကးေတာင္းရမွန္း မသိျဖစ္ခဲ့ရတယ္။

အရပ္ဘက္လူမႈအဖြဲ့အစည္းမ်ားရဲ့ ေဒသခံျပည္သူေတြဘက္က ရပ္တည္လႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြ ၂၀၀၀ ခုႏွစ္ေက်ာ္မွာ အရွိန္ျမွင့္လာပါတယ္။ ၂၀၀၂ ခုႏွစ္မွာ Greenpeace သုေတသနဓာတ္ခြဲခန္းရဲ့ မယ့္ေမာ့ေဒသက ေလထုကို စမ္းသပ္ေတြ႕ရွိခ်က္အရ ဓာတ္အားေပးစစ္ရံုကေန သက္ရွိလူသားအပါအဝင္ သတၲဝါေတြကိုေသေစနိုင္တဲ့ န်ူရိုေတာ့က္စ္ဆင္မာက်ူရီ (Neurotoxin Mercury) တႏွစ္ကို ၃၉ တန္ ထုတ္လႊတ္ေနၿပီး ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးျပာ တန္ခ်ိန္ ၄.၄ သန္း ထုတ္လႊတ္ေနပါတယ္။

၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္မွာ မယ့္ေမာ့ေဒသက ျပည္သူေတြကိုယ္စား ေရွ့တန္းကေန ထိုင္းအစိုးရကို အေရးဆိုခဲ့တဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းခြင္ က်န္းမာေရးဆိုင္ရာ လူနာမ်ား၏အခြင့္အေရး ကြန္ရက္အဖြဲ့ (Occupational Health Patients Rights Network) အဖြဲ့က ခ်င္းမိုင္း အုပ္ခ်ုပ္ေရးဆိုင္ရာတရားရံုးမွာ မယ့္ေမာ့ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုကို တရားဆြဲခဲ့ပါတယ္။

၂၀၀၄ ခုႏွစ္မွာ လမ္ပန္းခရိုင္တရားရံုးက မယ့္ေမာ့ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုက ထုတ္လႊတ္တဲ့ ျပာေတြေၾကာင့္ သီးႏွံေတြပ်က္စီးမႈအေပၚ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၁၄၀,၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေငြအျဖစ္ ေဒသခံေက်းရြာေတြကိုေပးရန္ စီရင္ခ်က္ခ်ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာ မယ့္ေမာ့ေဒသခံေတြအတြက္ ရွားပါးတဲ့ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈတခုျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

၂၀၀၅ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဆန့္က်င္ေရးလႈပ္ရွာမႈေတြ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံမွာ အရွိန္ျမွင့္ခဲ့ၿပီး People Against Coal Network of Thailand ကို စတင္ထူေထာင္လာၾကပါတယ္။ ဘန္ေကာက္အေျခစိုက္ Greenpeace Southeast Asia အဖြဲ့ဟာ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံရဲ့ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဆန့္က်င္ေရး လႈပ္ရွားမႈမွာ ထိပ္ဆံုးကေန တတ္တတ္ၾကြၾကြပါဝင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

သို့ေပမယ့္ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးဆန့္က်င္ေရးလႈပ္ရွားမႈဟာ ထိုင္းအစိုးရနဲ့ စီးပြားေရးလုပ္ငန္းအသိုင္းအဝန္းက အေရးတႀကီးလိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ ေဈးအေပါဆံုး ေလာင္စာစြမ္းအင္သံုး လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားရရွိေရး စီမံကိန္းေတြကို မဟန့္တားနိုင္ပါဘူး။ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံက စက္မႈဇုန္ႀကီးေတြမွာ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးသံုး ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုေတြနဲ့ စက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းေတြ တိုးတက္မ်ားျပားလာေနတာက သက္ေသပါပဲ။

ဒါေပမယ့္ တေန့တျခား အားေကာင္းလာတဲ့ လူမႈအဖြဲ့အစည္းေတြရဲ့အင္းအားကို ထိုင္းအစိုးရက လ်စ္လ်ူရႈမထားပါဘူး။ အဲ့လိုပဲ ထိုင္းစီးပြားေရးအသိုင္းအဝန္းကလည္း တေန့တျခား စိုးရိမ္မႈေတြ ရွိလာေနပါတယ္။ ထိုင္းနိုင္ငံရဲ့ သဘာဝဝန္းက်င္နဲ့ ျပည္သူက်န္းမာေရးဆိုင္ရာ ျပႆနာေတြကို ထိန္းခ်ုပ္နိုင္မယ့္ အေကာင္းဆံုးေသာေျဖရွင္းခ်က္က ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံပါပဲ။

မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၂၆၀၀ ေက်ာ္ထုတ္လုပ္တဲ့ မယ့္ေမာ့ေက်ာက္မီးေသြး လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အားေပးစက္ရံုေၾကာင့္ ေဒသခံထိုင္းျပည္သူေတြ ဘယ္ေရြ႕ဘယ္မ်ွ ဒုကၡေရာက္ခဲ့တယ္ဆိုတာကို ေလ့လာၾကည့္ရင္ ထားဝယ္အထူးစီးပြားေရးဇုန္မွာ မီဂၢါဝပ္ ၁၀,၀၀၀ ထုတ္လုပ္ဖို့ ရည္မွန္းထားတဲ့ အီတာလ်ွံထိုင္းကုမၸဏီရဲ့ ေက်ာက္မီးေသြးစက္ရံုတခုမက တည္ေဆာက္မယ့္ စီမံကိန္းဟာ ေဒသခံေတြအတြက္ ေကာင္းက်ိဳးနဲ့ ဆိုးက်ိဳး ဘယ္ဟာပိုမ်ားသလဲဆိုတာ စဉ္းစားၾကည့္နိုင္ပါတယ္။

Social Impact Assessment

2011-12-06T09:12:00.001-08:00