In the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis in Burma in which 1.5 million people are at risk of dying from disease, local government officials in Rangoon have been selling aid and bribing residents in order to turn a profit, according to sources in Rangoon. It has been eight days since Cyclone Nargis wiped out entire villages along the Irrawaddy delta and left Rangoon in shambles, but the ruling junta has prevented relief efforts from barely making a dent in the recovery process.
Government officials have stolen donations of rice, cooking oil and diesel and sold them on the black market, a businessman in Rangoon said on Sunday. In several townships around the major city, the government announced that it would provide a certain amount of rice and cooking oil to each household, but local township officers were found refusing families their quotas and instead selling the goods on the black market.
“Most community heads and their staffs are doing good biz in leading distribution of aids, like petrol, oil with cheap price/ but they store a lot/ they steal a lot,” the businessman wrote.
The businessman, whose 15-month old baby has a case of diarrhea due to lack of clean drinking water, said the officers denied his family its quota as well.
He sent his information to a contact in Thailand via Google Chat because the junta can censor email from the government-service providers and from Gmail. Even natural disasters are politically sensitive in Burma, and the junta has sent Burmese to prison in the past for giving information to the international press.