The sale of an estimated 23.65 acres of land in Kwan Hlar Village, Mudon Township, in 2013 has now sparked an investigation after local residents and the village administrator recently learned of the deal between eight buyers and a township land authority.
According to residents, the Ministry of Industry and [Mudon Township] Land Record Department facilitated the property sale without following official protocol.
Prospective land buyers are first required to obtain “Form 1”, before they are eligible to get “Form 2” and then “Form 7”, a permit allowing land cultivation. The eight land buyers reportedly never got Form 1 and circumvented the local administrator, approaching the Township Land Record Department instead.
The village administrator said he only learned of the sale and authorization to cultivate the land when the buyers recently informed him that they would start cutting down rubber trees on their lots. He then joined with the local farmland committee and nearly 500 residents in a push to investigate the transaction.
“To get Form 7, the process must be done through the village administration. But the village administrator did not even know this [sale] occurred. They must have gotten Form 7 from the Township Land Record Department. We are not satisfied with this. We will never be satisfied because we weren’t given the opportunity to learn about [the sale] even though the land is in our village,” said U Soe Aung, the Kwan Hlar Village Administrator.
He added that the buyers applied for Form 7 at the [Township] Land Record Department on October 17, 2013, and received approval the very next day, adding to suspicions of corruption surrounding the sale.
Three village committees in Kwan Hlar Village reported the case to the Mon State government earlier this year, and a petition opposing the way the sale was managed administratively has been submitted to the state and union governments with 483 local signatures. In mid-February, an investigation team was convened and appointed the Mudon Township Administrator to lead a review of the deal.
“Now, we’ve gotten to talk with U Khin Maung [one land buyer] only. We have not checked with the other seven people yet. If they got the forms from the [township] department, we have to inquire about this at the department. This is not over. We started this inspection on February 22 but have not received documents from the [Land Record] Department. So our process is delayed,” said U Hla Swe, a member of the investigation team and Mudon Township Land Record Project Department.
After meeting the landowners, officials from the Township Project Department and Land Record Department said they also plan to conduct site visits to the contested plots.
U Hla Swe added that Kwan Hlar did not have these types of land issues in the past, but said now they are common.
