BAGO, Myanmar: Street vendor Aung Kyaw Soe is among scores of Myanmar civilians grappling with the annual monsoon season this year.
He has not raised the prices of the snacks he sells so children can still easily buy them, as the country struggles with heavy flooding on top of an economic crisis in the wake of a 2021 military coup.
A small gesture like this might go a long way – especially when help from the military junta appears to have dwindled.
Aung Kyaw Soe lives in Myanmar’s fourth-largest city Bago, about 80km north of its largest city and former capital Yangon. About 20,000 people there have been displaced from their homes due to floods caused by torrential rain.
“This year, we are seeing the least amount of donations. Where I live, we have only received one lunch box since the start of the floods (in end-July),” he told CNA.
Most troops have been preoccupied with ongoing clashes in the Southeast Asian nation, where the military seized control and outed a democratically elected government more than three years ago.
Before the coup, soldiers were deployed in droves to help villagers during the monsoon season. But in recent years, they have been sent to battlefields rather than disaster zones.
Despite the military’s efforts to show its regime assisting and giving aid, CNA found the number of soldiers on the ground to be far and few.
