Dam project suspended, junta hits pay dirt

No.06 - 10/2007
11 October 2007
Environment
 
Dam project suspended, junta hits pay dirt
 
The good news is that the 780 Yeywa dam project in Mandalay division, opposed by environmentalists, has been put on hold indefinitely, but the bad news is that Burma's universally detested military regime has struck a super-rich vein of gold in the area, according to a businessman coming from Mandalay.
 
The lode was discovered two months earlier while soldiers, who doubled as hired laborers, were digging through solid rock. "They visited gold traders in Mandalay to show some samples," he recounted. "To their happy surprise, the traders, after testing the samples, offered them K10 million ($7,690) for each day's excavations. They had been smuggling out each night to deliver them to the traders before the news inevitably leaked to Nay Pyi Taw (Pyinmana) last month."

 
The businessman, who has for years been one of SHAN's principal sources, swore what he had said was nothing less than the truth. S.H.A.N. has not been able to obtain confirmation from other sources.
 
Another gold deposit packed with half a million gold diggers from all over Burma, as reported by SHAN on 23 April and later confirmed by Xinhua, is in Yamethin, 103 miles south of the new discovery.
 
Yeywa, located in Kyaukse district 158 miles north of Pyinmana, is planned to be over 130 meters high with an installed capacity of 78MW. It is one of the 14 hydropower station projects outlined by the Ministry of Electric Power for its 2001-2006 Five Year Plan.