Myanmar’s coup cuts off remittance lifeline
• Migrants’ families struggle to survive after sending money home becomes a problem
Since arriving in Thailand a few years ago, Myanmar migrant worker Own Mar Shwe had been sending money home every month for her family to buy food and medicine. That has come to an abrupt halt.
Like millions of Myanmar migrants who work abroad and send their earnings back home to dependants, the February 1 coup has cut a lifeline for her family, with bank and remittance services heavily disrupted.
“I’m concerned about how my family will get through each day,” Own Mar Shwe said by phone from Samut Sakhon, a Thai seafood hub south of the capital, Bangkok.
She usually sends 6,000 baht ($200) a month from working at a shrimp market, paying a broker who uses Wave Money, a digital payment service, to transfer the money to stores in Myanmar where her relatives pick up the payments.
She has not been able to do so since the military ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi a month ago, imposing internet curbs and prompting mass street protests and workers’ strikes across Myanmar.
“I don’t know what to do,” said the mother of three, expressing worries for her 76-year-old mother, who is sick and relies on remittances to buy medicine.
More than 4-million Myanmar migrants from a population of about 54-million work overseas in industries ranging from manufacturing and agriculture to domestic work, UN data shows. Their top two destinations are Thailand and Malaysia.
Many of them are the breadwinners for their families, sending back remittances that amounted to $2.4bn in 2019, or more than 3% of the country’s GDP, World Bank figures show.
Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied across Myanmar since the coup, with at least 31 people killed.
Many businesses have been closing to show support for the anti-coup movement or allowing their employees to attend protests during work hours. Bank services are irregular, with some branches closed, others reducing operations and limiting withdrawals.
The disruptions have led to a number of banks and financial firms abroad suspending their money transfer services to Myanmar or advising clients to put the transfer plan on hold, citing potential delays.
A check with a branch of Thailand’s Kasikornbank in Bangkok as well as the Western Union and International Money Transfer outlets in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, confirmed this. Another Thai bank, Siam Commercial Bank, said its transfer service was still up and running.
Western Union, the world’s largest money transfer firm, has said it “cannot provide a definitive time frame” on when its service to Myanmar might resume, according to a post on its website on February 19.
“Remittances are hugely important to keep families going in countries of origin,” said Nicola Piper, a professor of international migration at the Queen Mary University of London, who studies Asian labour migration.
“The current situation, the combined Covid-19 and political crisis, would most likely have a huge impact on the livelihoods of families left behind.”