Agence France Presse

Yangon, March 23:

Soe Soe, a 29-year-old woman working in Myanmar’s struggling garment manufacturing industry, can barely remember the last time she had a day off. March 2 was a national holiday, Peasants Day in Myanmar, but few rag trade workers here can afford to turn away an offer of overtime, even if that means gruelling 11-hour days, seven days a week, in factories trying to stay open despite US sanctions and the end of global textile quotas.

“Of course, I know the government requires factories to close on Sundays and national holidays, but we have no choice but to work. We need the money,” says Soe Soe, who has worked for eight years at a private garment factory in the Shwe Pyi Thar industrial zone in northern Yangon.

“I’m always tired and do not have the energy for working extra hours, but regular wages are simply not enough to keep going,” she laments, her lustreless big eyes, pale complexion and skinny body a testament to her work schedule.

Officials from the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association insist the factories are operating in line with the country’s labor laws and up to UN standards. But with monthly wages starting at about eight dollars, raises rare and inflation soaring, employees like Soe Soe say working every shift offered is the only way to survive.

“Five years ago, I earned enough money to send a bit to my family, but now I am struggling to stay out of debt,” Soe Soe says. With eight years experience, two years of university education, and including her extra shifts, Soe Soe says last month she took home just about $43.

After the US imposed sanctions following an attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers, many factories here moved just across the border into Thailand. With border controls often murky, many of the Myanmar workers followed their jobs to the area in and around Mae Sot, the Thai border town opposite Myawaddy.

“I heard from their families that they get good salaries but my parents simply refuse to let me try. I really want to go,” Soe Soe says. Still, she knows she is among the more fortunate because everyone else in her family has a job.

It’s a different story for 25-year-olds Nilar Win and Ni Ni, who came from Pyay Township in Bago division north of the capital to work at Hlaing Tha Yar industrial zone in west Yangon.

The only accommodation they can afford is a 7.5 by 7.5 metre room shared with 13 other women in a housing compound near the factory.

Except for a high shelf for their Buddhist shrine, the studio is bare.

They all sleep in the single room on woven cane or plastic mats. Half the women said they were university graduates, scraping by with whatever jobs they can find.

“Most people want to work overtime because they need the money,” says Nilar, who works in a foreign-owned garment factory, “Now with the economy in depression, theres no overtime work. Household expenses and living expenses are very high here.” Raises are virtually unheard of. “But we do not dare speak out about our feelings, because the owner warned us the factory would be closed down if there’s a workers’ problem,” Ni Ni says.

Reliable numbers of any sort are hard to come by in Myanmar, but inflation was estimated at 60 per cent in 2003.

When the US banned Myanmar’s exports in 2003, the country lost its largest market. Of the roughly 300 textile and garment factories operating at the time, the junta says 160 have been shuttered.

Over 80,000 workers lost their jobs, affecting some 400,000 of their dependants, according to officials.

With much of the industry already decimated, the immediate effects of the end of global textile quotas in late 2004 have been less dramatic here than in other countries in the region, which have taken a hit as Chinese exports soared in January.

Myanmar never hit its production limits under the quota regime, even though firms from other Asian countries like Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea, which reached their limits, set up factories here to take advantage of the extra capacity.

Despite sanctions, clothing and textiles remain the country’s second biggest export after natural gas, bringing in $328 million, according to official figures for the fiscal year that ended in 2004.