Myanmar's people take desperate measures to survive

By Bill Tarrant

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - People in Myanmar were already living on the edge before the government doubled fuel prices, raising the cost of just about everything and shoving many over the precipice.

In a country where more than a quarter of the 56 million people live on less than a dollar a day, the sudden announcement of fuel price hikes on August 15 became the tipping point of a crisis that had been building for a long time.

For retired headmaster U Sein, 82, and his wife Daw Nu, 80, the plunge in their quality of life has been nightmarish.

"My monthly pension now buys only two cups of tea although it used to be enough for the monthly subsistence diet for my wife and me when I first retired over 20 years ago," U Sein told Reuters in May, months before fuel prices went up.

The cost of living had soared since the failed uprising of 1988, residents say, but has really rocketed the past year.

"We saw incredible changes within a year," food-stall owner Ma Ahmar said. "A viss of chicken is about 5,500 kyat, from 3,000 kyat last year, while a viss of palm oil costs 2,300 kyat, compared with 1,250 kyat last year."

Fresh water and electricity are luxury items for many in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

"We have to queue for about an hour to fetch two pails of drinking water from the lake," said Ko Myint Oo, a resident of Dala Township, just outside the capital.

Similar conditions fuelled the 1988 rising, when the government suddenly raised rice prices and demonetized the kyat, rendering peoples' savings worthless overnight.

"It's desperate," said Sean Turnell, professor at Australia's Macquarie University and co-author of Burma Economic Watch. "Middle-class Burmese are selling their possessions literally to survive. People can't go to work because they can't afford the bus fares."

"For a while, we've been hearing stories about people on the margins of survival. Now in Yangon, the fuel price rises have pushed people to that margin where their survival is at stake.

"People are fed up and saying, 'what are we doing?'"

THE WEDDING VIDEO

The stoicism of people who have been living under military rule for 45 years began to crumble last November when a leaked video of the lavish wedding junta supremo Than Shwe laid on for his daughter sparked outrage.

The first low-level protests came in February, when the hitherto unknown "Myanmar Development Committee" called on the junta to address inflation, education and poor infrastructure.