Rangoon: While the relocation of Burma’s ministries and military headquarters from Rangoon to Pyinmana might have brought peace of mind for the country’s notoriously insecure leader, the move has actually been far from plain sailing.

Hundreds of civil servants-including the entire Ministry of Foreign Affairs, if reports are to be believed-have been ordered to return to Rangoon, as there’s basically nothing for them to do in the isolated outpost. These are civil servants, remember, who only six weeks ago had been told to pack up and ship out of Rangoon at a moment’s notice.

While the decision to relocate seems to have satisfied the generals and flummoxed the minions, the local residents of Pyinmana have also been given plenty to think about.

The main highway leading to Pyinmana, which runs from Rangoon right up to Mandalay, is being expanded to a whopping eight lanes and the approach to the Pyinmana turn-off now resembles a dust storm as diggers and trucks work to widen the existing two-lane track. With a radical restructuring of the town itself in the works, the heavy Chinese machinery-currently carving great chunks out of the countryside-is ready to roll into Pyinmana any time now.

All main roads in the town are being expanded to a standard 40 feet (just over 12 meters) and imposing red flags have been planted to mark the required dimensions-a common sight in Pyinmana these days is that of ministry workers out in the middle of the street clutching tape measures and flag poles.

So what happens if your home or business is situated on a road slated for widening? Well, if you’re lucky you might only be required to scale back your garden a little. But if your actual house encroaches on the new boundaries, the whole thing could end up being demolished.

Ironically, given this problem established residents in Pyinmana are facing, outsiders are fighting to get hold of land in town. To the delight of a local population-whose main previous source of income was the timber industry and a couple of sugar cane refineries-property is now going for three or four times its usual value, as businesses from Rangoon and Mandalay rush to get closer to the junta.

In fact, many of the generals are doing well out of the property market themselves. Rumor has it top brass began buying up land in and around Pyinmana a couple of years ago and is already looking at a tidy profit.

Insider trading in the Burmese government? Surely not.

As well as those lucky enough to cash in on land deals, brick makers, laborers and restaurateurs are also finding work easier to come by, now the city’s population has effectively swollen by as many as ten thousand.

Moving away from Pyinmana and closer to the shiny new ministry buildings themselves, Kyet Pyay is also seeing changes. The tiny village, whose name roughly translates as “purged of ghosts”, is doing a roaring trade as trishaw drivers ferry civil servants and their families between their barren housing compounds and Kyet Pyay’s tea shops-one popular cafe was roped into providing refreshments for the Ministry of Information’s opening ceremony, though what the Ministry actually got for its reputed 20,000 kyat (US $17) budget remains unclear.

Even Kyet Pyay’s spit and sawdust market is heading for a refurb: tarpaulins and tea chests are to be replaced by a three-storey concrete affair.

So, it’s all go in and around Pyinmana. The local economy’s been turned upside down, and construction companies that have been brought in from the capital-HTC Construction, Max Myanmar, A1 Construction, Asia World and Tet Lan Construction to name a few-are enjoying big, fat contracts.

For many, Pyinmana is turning into something of a gold mine. Unless your house happens to be in the way, of course.