Registering Rohingya boats
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SITTWE - The Transport Department in Sittwe, Rakhine state, has instructed the owners of unregistered boats to have their properties properly registered within a week.
The department said there were a large number of unregistered boats, along with 900 registered boats with over 20 horsepower and 3,000 registered boats with less than 20 horsepower in Rakhine State.
An official at the department said that the horsepower of the boats was the focal point of the inspection. The owners then were asked the purposes the boats are used for, whether for fishing, selling groceries or carrying commodities.
There are approximately 280 unregistered boats in Taechaung Village, which is primarily inhabited by Rohingya Muslims.
The inspection started on September 17.
Before this, no systematic inspection of boats had been conducted in Rakhine State since the 2012 outbreak of communal violence that resulted in over 100 deaths. Most of the victims were Muslim.
