Wednesday 18 December 2013

Bogyoke market shopowners upset after being ordered out

Renovations to the market’s famed jewellery hall are set for this month, during the busiest time of the year.

Several dozen merchants at Yangon’s popular Bogyoke Aung San Market are refusing to follow orders to temporarily evacuate the premises at the peak of the tourism season, complaining that the loss of business could affect their livelihoods.

About 30 stallholders, running some 60 counters in the market’s jewellery hall, were ordered on short notice to evacuate the premises before December 31, while the main jewellery hall undergoes a renovation that will take an unspecified amount of time, shopkeepers said.

“We will stay open. We cannot close,” said Daw Khin March Cho, owner of Golden House Jewellery, who said the notice was served on December 1 by the company that runs the jewellery hall, Super World Co.

“They gave only one reason for this sudden action – that they needed to upgrade the jewellery hall. There has been no negotiation about our returning after the upgrade. But this is peak season for tourist customers,” she said.

Another stallholder, Ma Khaing, owner of King and Queen Jewellery, said that there are no vacancies in the market and that being forced to leave in December would ruin her livelihood.

“We can’t relocate because Bogyoke is the main market and we have regular foreign customers here. If we are forced out, our livelihoods will be destroyed,” she said.

Shop owners in the market have been there for the better part of ten years with the understanding that they would pay rent directly to the Cooperative Department of the Ministry of Cooperatives, who runs the remainder of the market.

“But now the hall is owned by a private company,” said Daw Khin Kyawl, owner of Yaung Shwin jewellery counter. “We were never told of any change in ownership.”

Daw Yi Yi Swe, manager of Super World Co, declined a request for comment from The Myanmar Times.

“I have no authority to answer. Our boss is overseas and will not be back for some time,” she said.

U Htun Myint Aung, a member of parliament, said that based on documents held by the cooperative department and the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC), the 1993 sale of the hall appears to have been illegal.

“They had no right to sell to a private company unless the sale was approved at the governmental level,” he said. “This is not fair.”

He said he would raise the issue in parliament.

source: The Myanmar Times

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