Saw La Yar Koo, Myanmar– When a village in the conflict-torn hills of eastern Myanmar was asked to pay authorities more than $10,000 to plug into an electricity grid, families put themselves in debt to find the cash.
Ten months later children there are still squinting over their homework by candlelight and dinners are cooked on open fires as the work to connect their homes to power lies unfinished, beset by delays and bureaucracy.
Roughly 70 percent of Myanmar's population still does not have access to power, so the once pariah state, which already relies on hydropower to generate half of its electricity, is again turning to its rivers in new plans to harness energy from dams.
But as it rushes to plug the power gap, activists warn of worsening tensions in ethnic minority border areas, where such projects have long brought bloodshed and upheaval – but little energy.
Back in Saw La Yar Koo village, eastern Kayah state, residents are losing patience. Sitting under the soot-blacked ceiling of her living room in the faltering glow of the cooking fire, 24-year-old Pi Rar feels cheated.
''If we had electricity, we could cook with it, could use computers and the children could study at night. I attended a computer course but I couldn't practise at home without power,'' she said.
On the dusty track outside her house, where farmers drive bullock carts past simple wooden stilt homes, a gleaming transformer sits idly after villagers say cash-strapped authorities asked each family to stump up another $350 to install electricity.
''I had to borrow half of the 80,000 kyats (the initial payment of $80) from a moneylender... They (local authorities) say we have to pay more to connect the cables to the houses,'' Pi Rar told AFP.
The costs are likely to push this corn farming village into further debt just as it hopes to reap the rewards of a tentative peace deal in the state after years of bloody civil war.
Myanmar has promised access to electricity for 50 percent of its population by 2020 and for all by 2030, as it clambers to reduce poverty and remain viable for the businesses piling into the former junta-ruled land.
Hydropower looks set to dominate. A string of major dams is planned along the Salween River, which courses from China down through the mountainous territories of eastern Myanmar's many ethnic minorities.
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/conflict-and-candlelight-myanmars-energy-conundrum-3/
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