Mining and Land Lease in Waing Maw Township, Kachin State

Naung Hee village and Makham Ti village are situated 20 miles from Waing Maw Township in Myitkyina district. Since 2014-2015, banana cultivation plantation has started in these villages. Local people from these villages began leasing their land for hundreds of acres for Chinese banana plantation. Apart from agriculture, villagers also work on small scale gold mining for their living.

Location and land issue
Local people lease land to Chinese businessmen from China. Land lease were done with contract. Some local people do not want to lease their ancestral land. However, due to most of land were leased, land owner don’t have to work hard and villagers can get income money every two years for one acre by leasing their land. Those who have over 10 acres of land get a lot of money from land lease and they build new houses. With left-over money, they spend on households. Due to no other job available, villagers decide to lease their land to solve their family expense in easy way according to local land owner.

The hardship of villagers
To work on Taung Ya (hill farming), it is quite far. It is more convenient to lease the land to Chinese businessmen so that we don’t have to work tirelessly. Some land owners said that they can support enough to their families if they work on their land and they want to inherit their ancestral land to their children. However, the surrounding land owners all leased out their land to Chinese businessmen. The situation led them to lease their land as wells. Nevertheless, most of villagers from Waing Maw Township lease out their land to solve their financial problem. In Naung Hee village, hundreds of thousands of acres of land were leased to Chinese businessmen not only for banana cultivation, also for chili and watermelon cultivation. Now is chili season. There are hundreds of workers at banana plantation and they live in banana plantation in whole families. These workers get paid 7000 Kyat per day. During this political and social crisis, the food price increase and they did not make end meet.
Local people expressed that those land owners who have leased their land are worried that due to heavy use of chemical fertilizer on banana plantation. They use 30 pack of fertilizer for one acre of banana cultivation. When these Chinese businessmen leave due to some reason, local will not get renting fee as well as the land will not be as fertile as before. There are only a small number of people who work as daily wage labour for Chinese because of bad behavior of Chinese businessmen who swear and treat worker poorly.

Armed groups
Villagers who do not own land, they work on small-scale gold mining at Kadu River. They conduct mining by digging up by hands, panning and sluicing. According to a gold miner, even though they work as small scale but if they have 8 members, village authorities kick them out or SAC military battalion in front of the river can come to arrest them. This area is under control of Burmese military. They have declared the area as no gold mining with big machines. If regional (Burmese battalion) found that fishing, boat pass by, gold mining with big machine, they will shoot whoever. There is no need to pay tax for gold mining, but gold miners are in worries. For those who don’t have land, it is difficult for them to make a living. Those who work on small scale gold mining, they can find just small piece of gold daily.