• Home
• about
• Activities
• Contact
• Programs
• Manual

• Analysis
• Commentary
• Feature
• General Election
• Monthly Report
• News
• PDF Format
• Special Report
• Video Clips

Citizens loose trust in Burma’s 2014 Census due to lack of Transparency

According to the local people of Mudon Township, Mon State, most of the area residents are not interested in the 2014 Burmese Census, which took place between March 30^th and April 14^th of this year, due to profound distrust of the Burmese government.

An officer from the New Mon State Party (NMSP) in Mudon Township notes that there are serious issues with this  year’s census.  Not only are citizens confused as how to fill out the census form, but there are rising issues of fraud and corruption concerning ethnic identification.  “It is great to do a census”, the officer says, “but the citizens do not really understand the census well, and in the ethnicity section citizens are [identifying] as Mon ethnicity, but we heard that census takers write in the Burmese ethnic code for the ethnicity part. But we are still investigating to know every detail about that”.

All census reporters who are school teachers, are mostly Burmese. In Mon State, some Mon villagers do not understand Burmese very well, so Mon people in the villages have requested to have the data collection monitored, but that did not happen.

“In our village, we requested to our village administrator that before they do the census in our village, to allow two Mon youths to go with the census takers. At the beginning, the administrator said they would allow it, but in reality they did not allow the Mon youths to follow the census taker groups”, said a member of Mudon Township administration.

According to Nai MehmGakao, a member of the Mon Democratic Party, “Even in Mudon Township the census questions are not systematic, because they have 41 questions, but they do not ask them step by step. For example, they don’t as the breadwinner’s (husband’s) name, age, and job first, but ask about the owner, father, mother, grandfather, and grandmother first. I don’t understand it.

“Moreover”, says Nai MehmGakao, “my last name was wrong on their list, and when I told them to correct it, they said it is fine and that they know it. As I see it, they ask the questions that they want to ask, and whatever we answer, they will take the answer that they want.”

Comments