Captain Min Min, a
Buddhist from Myanmar, looks on as a stream of Muslim Rohingya labourers
zig-zag up narrow gangplanks hauling sacks of ginger from his boat onto
Bangladeshi soil -- one of many seizing the economic opportunities presented by
a refugee crisis.
"I don't worry
about conflict... everything is just business," the ethnic Rakhine skipper
says, offering whiskey, cigarettes and big betel nut-stained smiles as he waits
for his nine-tonne cargo to be unloaded.
The Bangladeshi
district of Cox's Bazar now hosts around one million Rohingya from Myanmar, the
vast majority of whom fled their country a year ago, driven out by the army and
mobs of ethnic Rakhine, who falsely brand the Muslim minority as "Bengali"
intruders.
The makeshift
Rohingya camps have now congealed into tent cities spread out across hills and
farmland.
They contain new and
dynamic economies, pump-primed by donor money and driven by a captive market of
hundreds of thousands in need of food, shelter, work and -- for those who can
afford it -- consumer goods.
For generations
trade has diluted ethnic and religious rivalries among the Rakhine, Rohingya
and Bangladeshis who flit between the two countries.
Commerce was barely
interrupted as scores of Rohingya villages were torched in August last year,
sparking an exodus of around 700,000 people by land and sea into Bangladesh.
The skies were heavy
with smoke, but Min Min says he carried on delivering his "Made in
Myanmar" cargo to Teknaf port -- rice, ginger, make-up, noodles and the
"ainshi" chestnuts ubiquitous at Rohingya snack stalls.
The refugee influx
has been good for business, adds his friend Thoin Line, an ethnic Rakhine
importer from the Bangladesh side of the border.
"The Rohingya
are tough... they work night and day," he says, adding, "and their
wages are not too high."
Below, a line of
drenched, wiry workers emerge from the hull of the boat, each shouldering two
30-kilogramme (66-pound) sacks of ginger imported from Myanmar.
They will earn
between 300-500 taka ($3-6) a day for their back-breaking efforts -- a decent
wage of sorts for labourers officially barred from working in Bangladesh and
thus compelled to pay a share of their earnings to camp leaders who cherry-pick
the workforce.
Most refugees are
either jobless or stuck at the bottom of the labour ladder, a place they have
occupied since Myanmar first began expelling its Rohingya in 1978.
- Praying
for rain -
At the Kutupalong
megacamp Bangladeshi entrepreneur Kamal Hussein, 24, is praying for rain.
His income comes
from a row of nearly 50 mobile phone charging points secured by bamboo struts.
"Business is
slow... it is sunny and most people have solar panels so they don't need our
shop," he says.
Business is better
when it rains because then "the solar panels don't work", he adds.
Consumer goods like
mobile phones are in hot demand as refugees settle in, spending salaries and
remittances from relatives overseas.
Salesman Kaiser
Ahmed says before last August's crisis he sold five or six phones a week at the
existing camps.
"Now it is
around 300," he explains.
Like many other
Bangladeshis, Kaiser's income has surged in step with the crisis.
Stores to repair and
pawn Rohingya jewellery, stalls selling gaudy saris and shops charging refugees
30 US cents to watch live English Premier League football matches on their TVs
have sprung up around the camp fringes over the past year.
- NGO
influx -
Furthermore, the
non-profits which work in the camps are big buyers of local bamboo, tarpaulins,
concrete, pots, pans and blankets and employ thousands of Bangladeshi and
Rohingya staff.
Bangladeshi Mohammad
Jashan, 26, whose home is just outside Kutupalong, says he has climbed up the
value chain in each of the three jobs he has held in foreign organisations in
the last 12 months.
He now earns $300 a
month for a British charity -- several times higher than the national average.
"My next salary
will be higher as I have more skills," he says, beaming proudly.
But pinch points are
emerging.
Poorer Bangladeshis
say the Rohingya influx has collapsed wages.
Crime, drugs and
prostitution are rising, while the foreign NGO influx has warped prices --
making owners of apartments, cars, hotels and restaurants richer, but
sharpening the poverty of the locals with nothing to offer them.
Even among the
Rohingya resentments are emerging.
"After the new
refugees came the NGOs put all the focus into them," says Setara Begum,
who was born in Kutupalong and is one of the roughly quarter million refugees
to have lived in Bangladesh for years.
"We only get
basic rations now," the 18-year-old said.
- Keeping
the peace -
In June the World
Bank moved to head off angst between the Rohingya and their Bangladeshi hosts,
offering nearly half a billion dollars in grants for refugee health, education
and sanitation.
The aim is to help
ease Dhaka's burden and establish services that will also be used -- and
staffed by -- Bangladeshis.
With refugees
unlikely to be repatriated any time soon, cash and jobs are the best route to
keeping the peace.
At a beach outside
the Shamlapur camp, Rohingya fisherman Mohammad Hossain says he worked his way
up over two decades from crew to become the co-owner of two of the distinctive
crescent-shaped boats that dot the coastline.
It is a dangerous
job in the high monsoon seas.
But there is no
shortage of willing crew so the number of boats braving the waves has increased
along with the catch, as money is spun from desperation.
"Bangladeshis
are scared of the sea. But Rohingya live on the coast... we are used to the
water," the 30-year-old says.
"It's risky but
the Rohingya here can't do anything else."
Source: AFP
