Hlaingthaya Township

History

Hlaingthaya was incorporated as a township in 1989, following the 8888 Uprising, in order to resettle squatters in central Yangon. In 1991, authorities began establishing industrial zones and produce trading centres in the township. The largest industrial zone, Hlaingthaya, was established in 1995 and covers a land area of 567 hectares. In 1995, FMI City, a gated housing development, was established in the township. After the 2008 Cyclone Nargis, thousands of internally displaced refugees from the Ayeyarwady delta migrants re-settled in Hlaingthaya.

In 2019, plans to split the township into two (due to violence and over-population) were reported, although no official announcement could be found, the township had already been split in West and East constituencies for the 2020 Myanmar general election. In 2023, the General Administration Department issued documents reporting on the two townships separately stating that the townships had been separated into new townships on the 27 January 2020 according to Legal Notification 32/2020.

In the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Hlaingthaya became a centre of anti-coup resistance. On 14 March 2021, the military and police forces committed the Hlaingthaya massacre, killing at least 65 civilians and marking a major escalation in the military's use of force against civilians.

Commerce

Hlaingthaya is home to a dozen industrial zones, including Hlaingthaya, Shwe Linban, and Shwe Thanlwin, which housed more than 850 factories that employed 300,000 workers as of November 2019.

Infrastructure

The township is connected to other parts of Yangon across the Yangon River over the Aung Zeya Bridge and the Bayinnaung Bridge, and to TwanteTownship over the Pan Hlaing river by the Pan Hlaing Bridge.

Demographics

The 2014 Myanmar Census enumerated 687,867 persons in Hlaingthaya Township. This made it the single largest township by population in the country. The population density was 10,210.6 persons per square kilometre. 53.1% of residents were female, while 56.9% were male, and the median age was 25.6 years.

In 2019, the township reportedly only had 440,949 people. This number likely excludes the large amount of residents who live in informal housing.

Ethnic makeup

The Bamar make up the majority of the township's population, while the Karen and Rakhine are the largest minority groups.

Education

The township has 46 primary schools, 8 middle schools and 4 high schools. West Yangon Technological University also maintains a campus in Hlaingthaya.

References

References

1. (May 2017). "၂၀၁၄ ခုနှစ် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံလူဦးရေနှင့် အိမ်အကြောင်းအရာသန်းခေါင်စာရင်း". Department of Population.
2. Kyaw Kyaw. (2006). "Megacity yangon: transformation processes and modern developments". Lit Verlag.
3. "Hlaingthaya Township". Yangon City Development Committee.
4. Thar, Hein. (2019-11-06). "Government seeks to tame Hlaing Tharyar, Yangon's wild west".
5. (2 May 2022). "Expansion of new districts in Nay Pyi Taw, regions and states".
6. (2016-08-16). "Myanmar Rising: Industrial and Special Economic Zones".
7. (2019-09-24). "FMI City will be transferred back to government".
8. (April 2009). "Profile Hlaingtharyar Township". Myanmar Information Management Unit (UNIT).
9. (2019-11-06). "Government seeks to tame Hlaing Tharyar, Yangon's wild west".
10. General Administration Department. (March 2023). "Hlaing Tharyar (A Shae Paing) Myone Daethasaingyarachatlatmya".
11. (2022-03-14). "Violence Against Protestors at Hlaing Tharyar".
12. Nway. (2022-02-06). "Revolutionary roads: how the army tried to crush Yangon's most anti-coup district". The Guardian.
13. (2021-09-28). "[Myanmar] Increasing closures of factories and business since February harm the well-being of workers".
14. (October 2017). "Hlinethaya Township Report".
15. (May 2017). "၂၀၁၄ ခုနှစ် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံလူဦးရေနှင့် အိမ်အကြောင်းအရာသန်းခေါင်စာရင်း ပြည်ထောင်စု".
16. (2019-09-30). "လှိုင်သာယာမြို့နယ် ဒေသဆိုင်ရာအချက်အလက်များ".