Choking in Debt

[Zomi for Federalization and Democratization of Burma]

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Why are the Bamar Buddhist people poor? Contrary to the SPDC's
statement that Burma was peaceful (which it is not) and prosperous
(which it is not), the abject poverty of the Bamar Buddhist people
cannot be hidden for long. This dismal poverty is the direct result of
the mismanagement of the economy by the greedy, self-seeking Brutal
Bamar Buddhist fascists. Nobody, even pro-fascists, can deny this
fact.
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Choking in Debt

By ZAW MIN MAUNG/ THE IRRAWADDY Monday, February 6, 2012



BAGO—Burma's traditional cheroot-makers are some of the lowest earners
in the country. The imbalance between their daily income and
expenditures results many of them struggling with debts at high
interest rates, and living in abject poverty.

“I have to work from 6 am to 10 pm for 2,000 kyat (US $2.50) per day
while my 16-year-old daughter does the same for 1,000 kyat," said Aye
Than, 42, a mother of three. As she speaks, she packs tobacco into
cheroots—large hand-rolled cigarettes—by the dim candlelight in her
house in the western outskirts of Bago [Pegu], about 90 km north-east
of Rangoon.

"However, I have to pay 30,000 kyat [$37] per month on a debt of
150,000 kyat. The main reason we borrowed the money is we cannot
survive without food,” she said.

She says that in 1988, she earned as much as 120 kyat for making 1,000
cheroots. But in those days, she says, she only had to spend 25 kyat
for rice per day to fed her family. Today, a skilled cheroot maker
earns 2,000 kyat per day to make 1,000 cheroots, but spends 1,000 kyat
of that on rice.

Aye Than says that after her husband passed away five years ago, she
stopped sending her son to school after his matriculation examination,
and had to withdraw her daughter from school while she was still in
the eighth grade.

"I needed them to work,” said Aye Than.

Women work 16 hours a day making cheroots at a makeshift factory on
the outskirts of Bago. (PHOTO: Irrawaddy)
She said her 21-year-old son is now working in her husband's native
town in central Burma as a hard laborer earning 2,500 kyat per day,
and sending 40,000 a month to his mother to help her out.

Cheroot-making is one of the most common occupations in Bago with
about 20 factories. Almost every female in the town has rolled
cheroots at some point in their lives—or, one should say, most of the
poor and working-class females have.

They work at factories or at home whereby the factory provides them
with ground Virginia tobacco, filter tips and paper labels.

Of course many of the women have children and must care for them as
well as providing school fees. If the factory closes, for example due
to floods, the cheroot-makers don't get paid. If the factory owners
reject the workers' cheroots—if they are moist or off-color—again they
don't get paid.

Most of the women have found no alternative to borrowing money from
loan sharks at crippling interest rates.

"If we borrow 30,000 from a moneylender, she will immediately deduct
6,000 and give us 24,000 kyat,” said Aye Than. “Then we have to repay
1,000 kyat per day for 30 days.

"If we can't repay it in full within 30 days, we have to pay compound
interest," she adds.

With no days off, no leisure time, no daylight and a poor diet, the
average cheroot-maker's misery is exacerbated by bad health.

“I would love to take a day off, but my children would go hungry the
next day,” Aye Than said.


http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=22980

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