Cabinet Ministers of the Rakhine State government presented their demand to Vice-President Henry Van Thio on October 12 to reduce the half of the central government power and delegate this power to the state government.

Rakhine State government Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Forest and Mining Kyaw Lwin said, “Many logs extracted from Rakhine State are kept at the roadside. These logs will be damaged if they are not properly maintained. The state will lose money. Maintenance of all these logs is controlled by the central government. The vehicles were impounded and all of them were damaged. If these logs and vehicles carrying them are transferred to the state government immediately after arrest it will be beneficial to country and region.”

Minister Kyaw Lwin added that the companies who had cattle export permits granted by central government had to visit Naypyitaw several times to get paperwork for each export as the state government had no authority to issue export papers for exporting these cattle to Bangladesh. Currently these cattle traders had to wait for over a month for getting these required papers and they had a lot of difficulties in doing their businesses, the minister said.

Reportedly, the State government has no authority to recruit and appoint even night watchman and sanitation workers so that there are many schools that do not have these staff.

Rakhine State government Social Affairs Minister Dr. Chan Thar said that the central government should delegate their power of appointing and transferring of primary, middle and high school (branch) teachers to the state government instead of holding it in their hands.

“Some schools are overstaffed with redundant teachers and some schools are understaffed. It will be very convenient for us if the central government delegate this power of transferring these teachers to understaffed schools. So the central government should relax some procedures in it,” Social Minister Dr. Chan Thar said.

The ministers of Rakhine State government presented these requests and demands to Vice-President Henry Van Thio at the meeting held at Rakhine State government office on October 12. The officers of State and district level attended this meeting.

In replying to the requests and demands made by State government cabinet members for delegation of power, the Vice-President said that there should be closer engagement and better cooperation between the State and Central governments as and when required.

Vice-President Henry Van Thio arrived in Rakhine State on October 11 to inspect development work and provide necessary assistance to them.