NayPyiDaw - The New Administrative Capital of Myanmar

A new administrative capital called Nay_Pyi_Daw was built, around 2003, at a place called PyinMaNa which is geographically located at the centre of Myanmar.

I visited the place in 2008, at a time most of the public administrative offices just moved from Yangon, the former capital and administrative place of the government. The roads and buildings were still under constructions.

There had been many reasons that most real facts and figures were hidden from the public eyes when the new capital was planned and built. I am not mentioning those rumours and political comments here. Since, it is quite sure, the planners do not need to get approval from the public or a panel board we can imagine how it would have gone thro' in the planning stages.

There are mainly two parts divided in the development of the capital. One part is the places for the lives and workplaces for civilians and public servants, and the other part is the place of lives and workplaces for supreme power holders. I will not mention the 2nd part of the new city where the underground tunnels might exist. I will emphasize on the part of the new cities where the general civilians and public servants dwell.

The most important place in our home is the place where we cook, eat, and disposed what we have eaten, the leftover and whatever we do not want. Technically it is called Sanitation and waste disposal system. It shows the status of living and how we keep a hygienic environment. We should also be aware of how we get a suitable Water Supply for drinking and portable uses. And we should also arrange a Drainage Network System to drain out after the use of water and unexpected flow from outside or heavy rainfalls.

What I mentioned above are essential needs for a household. It is the same for a new city, especially the capital city of the country should have been facilitated.

I had seen personally how the new city was facilitated during my visits. I had met and heard the inconvenient experiences of the dwellers who are the ordinary civilians. I had so many thoughts, and comments for the benefits of the general public.

If we can turn back the clock, I'd like to turn it back to the time when the thoughts came into the head of those supreme power holders.

Building the Infrastructures - Postal Services

I've never worked for postal services or involved in logistic business. But, I did use the postal services and logistic services locally and abroad.

I realized that the postal system in Myanmar is not efficient, and worst is that it is not reliable at all. People are using other means of sending parcels and letters, or sending money by their own conveniences such as - via the highway bus terminals!.

Let it be as we still can establish a new system (i'd say a new infrastructure) for the country. We're fortunate to have such a bad service system which is almost deteriorating and it can completely be vanished off as most facilities are century old and poorly facilitated.

It's a good news that people are turning into email rather than snail mails. That's why I said let it be the bad old postal system leaving behind. In our new postal system, we may need to consider reduced load of personal snail mail and greeting cards. And, we should also pay attention to the development of e-government system where everything may go on-line from individual tax matters to bidding - another means of reduction of the postal loading.

We should plan and establish infrastructures that will suit to the country's social and economic conditions, present (immediate & short term) and future (long term) requirements. When, most of the fellow Myanmar official hear "suiting to country's conditions" they'd think of own Myanmar's way of "do as I'd like to do" or" do what I thinks is good for the people".

The government should arrange excursion programs for it's officials to postal services of the developed countries. Get ties up with their postal systems and their service providers (probably private sectors of this particular country). Then plan a postal system network with infrastructures considering the private sectors involvement. Most important thing is to seek "expert advice" from the planning stage to operation stage.

Do remember that the role of the government is to guide smooth interactions between the public and business entities when they do business relations. The cost of the guidance for the government will levy to the public and private organizations respectively. The public and business entities alike should not be burdened by the levies, rules and regulations of the government. There are usually abuse of power by the government official when enforcing the guidelines or law. This is a normal characteristic of government officials who do not have ethical conducts and professionalism. It is a success of a government if we see good interactions between the public and business entities, and they are doing well.