FAO increases household incomes through the rehabilitation and construction of small-scale multipurpose infrastructures in Myanmar

Thanks to a generous contribution from the European Union, the FAO ProAct project is rehabilitating five irrigation infrastructures in four townships in central and northern Rakhine State through cash-for-work (CFW) activities. A total of 596 vulnerable households were selected to participate in CFW activities in the targeted locations, and 51 percent were Rakhine and 49 percent were Rohingya. Every participating household received an average of USD 95 after completion of the rehabilitation of the targeted infrastructure. All of the rehabilitation works were supervised by an FAO Engineer and project staff.Operation and maintenance guidelines and plans were developed for the irrigations schemes, and disaster risk management (DRM)/community-based DRM (CBDRM) plans will be prepared for each village before handing over the rehabilitated infrastructure to the communities.

The construction and rehabilitation of these irrigation infrastructures will help manage and control flow of water during the monsoon season. In addition, the infrastructures will store fresh water for the winter/summer season production, which includes vegetables and pulses. Some 313 farming households will benefit from these activities, and a total of 203 ha of farm land were rehabilitated through this CFW initiative.The rehabilitated infrastructures will enhance communities’ capacity to protect their livelihoods against natural hazard induced disasters while improving agricultural production and productivity.

During the CFW activities, all participating beneficiaries were provided with a cloth face mask. In addition,  hand-washing facilities were installed at each CFW site. COVID-19 mitigating measures were also communicated through posters, leaflets and orientation to all beneficiaries.