Solar Power to Villages in Karen State, Myanmar

As repeated in our past reports our activity in Myanmar is still suffering much from the outbreak of COVID 19 and the Coup of Feb. 2021.

On top of these difficulties lockdowns in Chinese cities made the production of solar equipment suspended for more than a month.  This delay further forced us to postpone the target date of our project completion from this May till next August.

Relocation of the projected sites from conflict prone areas to safer ones were almost fixed obtaining the understanding of EAOs(Ethnic Armed Organizations) and the installation work of solar systems to individual households is going on smoothly after some period of suspension.

We expect the installation work will be completed by the end of July.

In Mon state where conflicts are far fewer than in Kayin state, works are going on well after the delay by the lockdowns in Chinese cities.

Further, in the recent days, the Central Bank of Myanmar issued a decree that Foreign Currency remitted to the account opened in Myanmar should be converted at once into Myanmar Kyat by official exchange rate which is lower than the free market rate (by about 13% now).    This decree caused further confusion and difficulties in the commercial transactions.

As above reported, the situation in Myanmar is still in turmoil, however, the requests from the EAOs in destitute are very strong and we started the planning for the next phase.

Considering that the civil war between Junta and People Defense Force(PDF) group may be prolonged, we plan to concentrate to assist higher education & betterment of medical services in the EAO villages as schools and clinics are less susceptible to attacks by Junta forces.