By Yoon Sat - Jul 04, 2024
Although the current minimum wage is only set at 4,800 kyats per day and a subsidy of 1,000 kyats, the price of rice that the workers buy daily is from 7,000 kyats to 8,000 kyats per pyi. Palm oil is 13,000 kyats per peik tha (1.63kg) and the workers can only buy a small amount now.
In order to control the rising prices of rice, oil and commodity prices in the country, the military council officials set reference prices, but in reality, the prices did not fall, and the basic people did not have the right to enjoy the set prices.
“Even they set the reference price. 1 pyi of rice is from 7,500 to 8,000 kyats. We buy rice which cost 6,800 kyats per pyi but we can’t eat that so we have to buy 7,000 kyats rice. We get paid 4,800 kyats a day and a subsidy of 1,000 kyats. But we don’t get the subsidy every day. We want the minimum wages to be raised. No matter what they do, the workers are the downtrodden,” said a worker from an industrial zone.
No matter what the price of rice is, the workers have to buy at a high price, so the workers' daily wages are not even worth the price of a pyi of rice. Therefore workers' wages are expected to come out as a set rate.
The price of rice and palm oil don’t decline even after the military arrest the traders to control the prices when the price of a pyi of rice reaches above 7,000 kyats and a peik tha of palm oil reaches over 13,000 kyats. The gap between a worker’s daily wage and the price of a pyi of rice and a peik tha of palm oil is still huge.
“The raw price which is 3,000 kyats per pyi can’t buy as much as we want. We can buy only 2 pyi per once. It doesn’t make a change when we cook 2 pyi instead of 1 pyi as it doesn’t fill our stomach. We can’t buy the rice on working days due to long queues. We just have to buy with the price the stores sell,” said a garment worker.
Local shopping mall owners and traders are being arrested for not selling rice at a reasonable price. However, basic commodity prices such as rice prices, palm oil prices, and medicine prices have not declined, and the basic people can only buy and use them at market prices.
