စစ္မႈထမ္းေဟာင္းမ်ားကို ပါတီ၀င္ရန္ စည္း႐ုံးမႈမ်ားစတင္  

 စစ္အစိုးရက ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအတြက္ ျပင္ဆင္ေနသည္ဟု သတင္းမ်ားထြက္ေပၚေနခ်ိန္ တြင္ စစ္မႈထမ္းေဟာင္းမ်ားအား ပါတီဝင္ရန္ စည္း႐ုံးမႈမ်ား စတင္ေနၿပီျဖစ္သည္။
ဖြဲ႔စည္းပုံအေျခခံဥပေဒအား  တဖက္သတ္ အႏိုင္ရသည္ဟုေၾကညာခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ျပင္ဆင္ေနမႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္လာေနျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
“ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ႀကံ႕ဖြံ႔က က်ေနာ့္ကို လာစည္း႐ုံးေနတယ္၊ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္စစ္မႈထမ္းေဟာင္းအဖြဲ႔ကလည္း ေျပာတာပဲ၊ ပါတီနာမည္လည္းမသိေသးဘူး၊ က်ေနာ့္လုိ စစ္မႈထမ္းေဟာင္းတခ်ဳိ႕ စည္း႐ုံးခံေနရ တယ္လုိ႔လည္း သိရတယ္၊ ေသခ်ာတာေတာ့ ပါတီေထာင္ဖို႔ အႀကီးအက်ယ္ျပင္ဆင္ေနၾကၿပီ”ဟု အမည္မေဖာ္လုိသူ အရာရွိေဟာင္းတဦးက ေျပာသည္။   စစ္တပ္အတြင္း ႀကီးမားသည့္ အေျပာင္းအလဲမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ အဆုိပါစစ္ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီး မ်ားပင္ ေရြးေကာ္ပြဲတြင္ ပါ၀င္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ၎က ဆက္လက္ေျပာဆိုသည္။
ဦးေအာင္ေသာင္းနဲ႔ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေဌးဦးဆိုတာေတြကေတာ့ ျပန္႔ေနတဲ့သေဘာပဲ၊ ႀကံ႕ဖြံ႔ဗဟိုအတြင္း ေရးမွဴးေတြ၊ ဗဟိုအလုပ္အမႈေဆာင္ေတြက သူ႔တို႔ကို အရင္ခြဲတမ္းခ်ထားတဲ့ နယ္ေျမေတြကေန ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ၀င္ၿပိဳင္မယ္လို႔ေတာ့ သိေနရတယ္”ဟု အဆုိပါ အရာရွိေဟာင္းက ဆက္လက္ ေျပာဆုိသည္။
စစ္အစိုးရေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ ယခုလက္ရွိတြင္ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကိုသာ စိတ္ဝင္စား ေနၿပီး နာဂစ္မုန္တိုင္း ေနာက္တႀကိမ္္တိုက္ခတ္လည္း အဆုိပါကိစၥကို စိတ္ဝင္စားမည္မဟုတ္ ေၾကာင္း ၎က ဆက္လက္ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သည္။

Old Chevrolet buses being phased out in Rangoon

New Delhi – Burmese authorities in Rangoon said it will revoke the license of over 400 World War II vintage Chevrolet buses, which are unique to the city.

'All Routes Commuter Bus Authority' has commenced plans to replace the Chevrolet buses with a wooden body with a modern fleet of buses on Rangoon roads.

Japanese made City Buses will replace the old buses to ease traffic jams, an official of the Bus Authority told Mizzima on condition of anonymity.

"We will use the City Bus. Most of them are made in Japan. The old buses can accommodate few people. The new buses can carry more people and will help ease traffic jams in the downtown area. We need only one new bus instead of two old buses for that area," he said.

The main idea is to better the capacity which the new City Buses will provide compared to the old buses though the engines of these old ones are still in good shape, the official said.

"We have been replacing the buses since June 1 with the new buses that we have got. We will continue replacing as and when we get the new buses. It depends on the money we receive. We already have over 60 new buses," he said.

The fare in the new buses is Kyat 200 per head like the 'Parimi' buses. The number of passengers on the new buses is limited to its seating capacity. If buses are found carrying passengers standing, action will be taken against the drivers, the official said.

However the old Chevrolet buses can still be seen plying on the roads in Rangoon suburbs such as Thaketa, South Dagon and North Dagon.

There are a total of 5,000 buses plying on Rangoon roads.

Htin Kyaw remanded without being produced before court

Chiang Mai – Htin Kyaw, arrested for protesting against the fuel price hike, was remanded again yesterday without being produced in court though the court fixed yesterday for hearing his case for the fifth time.

The Rangoon Western District court hearing his case was transferred and the new judge is yet to take charge. So, he was remanded till July 16 for the next hearing. Htin Kyaw is a member of Burma Development Committee.

"The court didn't hear his case yesterday. The judge was transferred and the new judge has not yet arrived. The court remanded him again," Khin Maung Shein, the defence lawyer said.

Htin Kyaw was charged with three cases, protesting for letting him being ordained on 22nd March 2007 at Thamaing junction in Rangoon, staging demonstrations for rising essential commodity prices on 22nd April 2007 at Sanpya market Thingangyun and staging demonstrations in Rangoon Theingyi market in August 2007. He has been charged under section 124(a) of the Criminal Code for inciting disaffection towards the State, for each case.

These cases are being heard at the Western District Court. Examination of witnesses on the Theingyi market demonstration in Pabedan Township case is not yet completed.

Htin Kyaw urged the people on August 22 to protest against the government's decision on fuel price hike announced on August 15. He was arrested while he was staging a protest against the fuel price hike on August 25 in Theingyi market.

"The expression of a citizen, disliking something, is not violation of section 124(a) of the Criminal Code. This is not about inciting disaffection towards the State. This is just an expression of his will and desire based on true facts. So we pleaded with the court that this was not the case of 'disaffection towards the State," defence lawyer Khin Maung Shein said.

If convicted, he will face up to 20 years in prison for each case under section 124 (a) and up to two year's imprisonment under section 505(b) – disturbing public tranquility. So he faces a maximum of 60 years and a minimum of six years in prison.

Htin Kyaw staged protest demonstrations in prison calling for the release of all political prisoners including monks and students. For the second time, he staged demonstrations for being provided the right to stroll inside the prison compound and then finally for the third time, he shouted slogans like 'Down with dictatorship'. After which, he was sent to solitary confinement at the Dogs' cell for the third time.   

Aid groups face soaring rent prices

New Delhi - House rents in Burma's cyclone-hit Irrawaddy delta has hit an all time high as a result of humanitarian groups including United Nations aid agencies taking based in the area to help cyclone survivors.

A local resident of Laputta town said rent for a simple one flat house has rise to more than 100,000 Kyat (approximately US$ 80) per month from what use to be about 20,000 to 30,000 (US$ 23), after several aid groups have been deployed in the town.

"Usually, house rents are never so high and landlords don't always have people to rent their houses," the local said.

Two storey RC buildings are now being rented at a price of more than 400,000 kyat (US$ 300) per month, said the local, adding that the demand for renting houses is soaring as more non-governmental organizations and aid groups are wanting to take based in the town.

According to him, there are at least 6 International NGOs and several other national NGO beside private donors, taking based in the town.

Two months after the deathly Cyclone Nargis hit Burma's coastal regions, aid workers said emergency relief is yet to be reached to all survivors while reconstruction is just beginning to take place.

According to the UN's World Food Programme it has open warehouses in Bogale, Laputta and Pyapon towns, from which it is redistributing food supplies to cyclone victims. 

"Everyday we see a lot of aid workers moving in the town and there seems to be a huge number of them," a teashop owner in Pyapon town told Mizzima.

While helping cyclone survivors, humanitarian groups including the UN aid agencies do not only meet with soaring high price rents, but are also having to deal with the high cost of logistic support including renting of vehicles and boats to carry aid supplies.

Renting a small boat, which can carry about 30 to 40 rice baskets, cost about 50,000 kyat (US$ 38) per day and large boats that could carry at least a 100 baskets of rice cost about 100,000 kyat (US$ 80), a local aid worker in Laputta town.

He added that renting trucks or four wheeler vehicles is about 10 million to 20 million kyat (US$ 1,500) per month and is only possible for INGOs and UN agencies due to the high rent charges.

Despite the high charges, the aid worker said, both boats and vehicles are being continuously rented as boats and vehicles are the only way to reach to cyclone survivors in remote areas.

"We are renting large boats with 100,000 kyat per day," said the aid worker.