Yangon’s extreme poverty needs action: report
In a one-room hut in north Yangon, a middle-aged woman has a trick for those evenings when the children complain of hunger and she has run out of money and rice. “I ask them to drink extra water and go to bed,” said mother-of-seven Daw Lwin Aye. “If my husband has cash when he gets home, then we can eat.” It is no surprise that Myanmar’s largest city is home to many residents who are barely making the most modest of livings. But the difficulties many working families face—not just daily but hour-by-hour—are a wake-up call for government and policy makers, according to a recent report. Life on very low incomes in Yangon is about doing constant battle with cash crises, ill-health, and stress, the report’s findings show. Researchers interviewed members of three hundred families in some of the least well-off sections of three Yangon townships in late 2015 for Lives on Loan, Extreme Poverty in Yangon conducted by Save the Children together with the Yangon City Development Committee.
