With the death count climbing in Burma’s densely populated Irrawaddy Delta in the wake of last Saturday’s devastating cyclone, some officials in the capital are courting the ruling junta’s ire by leaving their posts to search for family members in the affected area.

Sources in Naypyidaw told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that civil servants in the regime’s new capital, located some 320 kilometers north of Burma’s largest city and former capital, Rangoon, have been denied permission to take leave until after a constitutional referendum scheduled to take place on May 10.

 

Despite orders to remain on the job, however, many have already made their way back to Rangoon, which was directly in the path of Cyclone Nargis when it struck in the early hours of May 3.

“Some staff members have returned with the tacit approval of their superiors,” said an official who works in the Ministry of Education, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We left our children in Rangoon, and we should be there with them now,” the official said, adding that higher authorities have turned down all requests for leave until after the May 10 referendum.

Many of Burma’s bureaucrats have homes in Rangoon, where they lived until the junta suddenly shifted the capital to Naypyidaw in November 2005. Telephone lines and Internet connections in Rangoon, which is still the country’s main commercial center, have been down since Friday.

Military personnel with relatives in the stricken area have also been returning to their homes without permission from their commanding officers.

A sergeant working at a military supply office in Naypyidaw said that some junior officers have gone back to Rangoon because they had been unable to make contact with their families there.

“I don’t know if the people who have gone to Rangoon will be punished after they come back to work,” he said.

Meanwhile, concern is also growing among Burmese people living in other parts of the country and overseas.

A doctor from Kalewa Township in northern Burma’s Sagaing Division said that she was deeply worried about the situation in Rangoon, because she hadn’t received any information from her family there since the cyclone struck.

Millions of Burmese living and working abroad are also troubled by the lack of concrete information coming out of the disaster zone.

“Every Burmese worker here is concerned about the situation,” said Aung Myint, an employee at a company in Malaysia’s Kalan State. “We keep trying to call Burma every chance we get.”

According to Aung Myint, Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian telecommunications company, sent a message to registered Burmese customers announcing that calls to Burma had been impacted by the Cyclone Nargis disaster.