Burma president urges evacuation of delta after floods

The president of Burma has urged people to leave a low-lying southern delta region, with rain water flowing into the area threatening further flooding as rivers reach dangerously high levels.

The widespread floods in the country were triggered last week by heavy monsoon rains and have killed 81 people, according to the ministry of social welfare, relief and resettlement.

President Thein Sein told people living in the Ayeyarwady delta region to seek shelter as swollen rivers rose higher.

“It’s best to evacuate to a safe place in advance since natural disasters can’t be stopped once they start,” he said in a speech broadcast on state television.

About 6.2 million people, 12 per cent of Burma’s population, live in the region, a southwest area where the Ayeyarwady and other rivers branch out into a delta leading to the sea.

Yangon, Burma's largest city, has not experienced flooding despite being near the delta.

A witness in Nyaungdon, a town in the Ayeyarwady region, said some villages were flooded, with only roofs visible above the water.

The witness said that residents feared waters would rise even further.

The delta is the country's major rice producing hub, but Soe Tun, secretary of the Myanmar Rice Federation, said much of the paddy fields in the area had been spared from flooding.

According to the ministry of agriculture and irrigation, 409 sq km of paddy fields in the Ayeyarwady region have been flooded, although only a fraction of those fields have been destroyed.

Fields destroyed

Country-wide, the impact on agriculture has been far greater. According to the ministry, 1.17 million acres of paddy field have been flooded, with 152,500 acres destroyed.

The government appealed for international assistance on Monday and supplies have started to arrive from abroad.

The call for help marked a change from 2008, when the then-military government shunned most outside aid after a cyclone killed 130,000 people, with most of the fatalities in the same delta region.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who earlier in the week toured flood-hit areas, said international aid and donations needed to be organised to increase effectiveness.

"Generous donations which are uncoordinated tend to go astray or to prove less effective than they might be if they were part of a well-laid plan," she said in a video on Facebook.

Kyaw Moe Oo, a deputy director from the department of meteorology and hydrology, said Yangon was not at risk from floods, but the department was monitoring water levels at reservoirs and dams around the city.

Reuters