Corruption and Bribery Continues in Thanbyuzayat Township

August 13, 2014

Nai Nay Lin Tun, electrical power engineer from Thanbyuzayat Township, has been accused of corruption and bribery, according to the local electrical community. Although the Thanbyuzayat Township community received permission to have their own electricity in their village, Nai Nay Lin Tun allegedly banned the community from buying electrical materials, as he wanted to purchase the materials himself in order to inflate the price and sell electricity to the villagers.

Appointed as electrical power engineer for Thanbyuzayat Township in August 2013, Nai Nay Lin Tun convinced and forced local people to have their own set electricity in the village; villages such as Ya Teay Taung, Taung Phalut, Aung Ku Tow, and Wae Rat also began using their own set electricity.

Every town or village’s engineer had to bribe Nai Nay Lin Tun if they wanted to get an electricity contract, selling equipment, and applying materials. Furthermore, Nai Nay Lin Tun charged the contractors 4.7 million kyat for registration to operate officially.

Nai Nay Lin Tin purchased the materials from Yangon, and set prices as he wanted to sell to villagers. Local people tried to find the correct price of materials from the shop owner in Yangon, but failed to receive any information.

However, residents of Taung Phalut refused to buy materials from Nai Nay Lin Tun, and bought the items themselves, as they know how Nai Nay Lin Tun had deceived them.

One lamppost costs between 90,000 and 100,000 kyat in the shop, but Nai Nay Lin Tin charged 125,000 per pole, and there are approximately 200 households in each village that applied for electricity from Nai Nay Lin Tun.

Through his deception, Nai Nay Lin Tun profited 1.5 million kyat from electric wires, and 2.5 million kyat from lampposts; he also turned a 6 million kyat profit from selling transformers. Local residents concluded that it costs one village at least 10 million kyat to obtain electricity from Nai Nay Lin Tun.

It seems that Nai Nay Lin Tun received permission from upper-level authorities to deceive the local people. Moreover, some local communities, which lack education, allowed Nai Nay Lin Tun to manage the buying of equipment, hiring of workers, and selling of materials for the local households.

According to an individual working in the Thanbyuzayat electric industry, “The contractors gave Nai Nay Lin Tun whatever he asked. Sometimes, refrigerators and computers were delivered by the contractors. The sellers of electrical materials had to pay for his drink wherever he had drinks at night. Moreover, he also got other [gifts] such as phones and computers.”

Nai Nay Lin Tun incited different perspectives in the local people, pitting them against one another. He also created a payment and bribery list for the local electrical community, to provoke fights with local villagers. As Nay Lin Tun continued to create problems for local communities, conflicts continued between local electric communities and villagers, to the point where the monks had to interfere to control the situation.

According to local sources, Nay Lin Tun will be transferred from Thanbyuzayat on August 15, 2014.

Written by Modinator · Filed Under News