Tensions rise as Myanmar turns to dams for power
When a village in the conflict-torn hills of eastern Myanmar was asked to pay authorities more than US$10,000 to plug into an electricity grid, families put themselves in debt to find the cash.
When a village in the conflict-torn hills of eastern Myanmar was asked to pay authorities more than US$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 per cent 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 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 glow of the cooking fire, Pi Rar, 24, 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 idle after villagers say cash-strapped authorities asked each family to stump up another US$350 to install electricity.
"I had to borrow half of the [initial payment] from a moneylender... they say we have to pay more to connect the cables to the houses," Pi Rar said.
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 after years of civil war.
Myanmar has promised electricity for 50 per cent of its population by 2020 and for all by 2030.
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.
But reliance on dams is controversial as many projects are in areas wracked by ethnic conflict.
Kayah activists fear Lawpita, Myanmar's first hydropower project, could be the bloody blue-print for future dams.
Thousands were displaced by the project, which now provides around a quarter of the country's hydropower capacity, and activists say an increase in soldiers stirred conflict and incidents of forced labour, land confiscation and sexual violence.
Dams are "conflict multipliers, which are not very helpful" as the country struggles to negotiate an end to the fighting, said Elliot Brennan, research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy. He said projects in Kayah and a dam upstream in Shan state by the Chinese Three Gorges company, largely fed the demand for energy in China's Yunnan province.
What electricity does stay in Myanmar has long been unevenly distributed. "What we have in our state - we should have a share. But electricity from Kayah goes to other places. Most government projects are like that," said Burma Rivers Network researcher Mi Reh.
