YANGON — A mosque in central Yangon, Myanmar's former capital and biggest city, is extending assistance to hundreds of households in the vicinity affected by the fallout of the devastating cyclone that has battered the Asian country.

"People are angry not at the shopkeepers, but at the government," Dawood, a Muslim elder, told Reuters on Wednesday, May 7, standing on the steps of the mosque and stroking his wispy beard.

The mosque has bought a pump powered by kerosene to supply hundreds of households with water from an artesian well that sits beneath it.

Women and children, holding buckets and tubs, queued for water outside the mosque.

Although the former capital avoided the kind of devastation that ravaged the Irrawaddy delta to the southwest, killing at least 22,000 and leaving another 41,000 missing, people are struggling for basic necessities.

There is still no electricity in the rubble-strewn city four days after Nargis uprooted trees, severed telephone cables and mangled billboards on the streets.

Most shops had sold out of candles and batteries and there was no word when power would be restored.

The city, formally called Rangoon, used to be one of Asia's most verdant cities.

"We hope electricity will be back in one or two weeks, but who knows?" said Dawood.

"No one is doing anything about it at the moment."

Muslims make up nearly five percent of Myanmar's more than 53 million population.

The largest group of Myanmar Muslims is the ethnic-Bengali minority, generally known as the Rohingyas, who mainly live in the western state of Rakhine.

Less numbered are the Indian-descended Muslims who live in Yangon and ethnic-Chinese Muslims, known as the Panthay.

 

Roaring Prices

Anger and despair are growing among the city's 5 million residents as petrol queues stretch for kilometers and food prices soar.

Double-lines of buses, trucks and cars queued for hours for compressed natural gas and petrol at filling stations open 24 hours a day.

Petrol is rationed to two gallons per vehicle. Prices have more than doubled since Saturday.

"I'm tired, hungry and thirsty," said Po Ya Kyang, 29, who had waited for four hours and was still 500 meters from the filling station.

A sudden fuel price hike last August sparked protests against the ruling junta and its disastrous handling of the economy.

At least 31 people died in the army's ensuing crackdown.

For now, any repeat of the protests appears a distant prospect.

"There won't be demonstrations," said one taxi driver.

"People don't want to be shot."

Vegetables are also being sold at three times last week's prices.

A cabbage costs 1,000 Myanmar kyat, or about $1, instead of the usual 250 kyat.

"It's because trucks are charging so much to bring goods into Yangon," one female vegetable seller told Reuters.

The military junta insists it has enough rice stocks to keep people fed, but the price of small bags of the staple have doubled since the cyclone tore through the delta, the country's rice bowl.

Black market money changers loitering on street corners say the price of gold has dropped by a quarter because people are selling their jewelry for cash.

"Everyone wants kyat so they can buy food," said money changer Ko Thin.

Many blame the junta, which has admitted it is struggling to cope but which still appears reluctant to open its doors to a full-scale international relief effort in the hardest-hit areas.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said Wednesday that 22 tones of emergency relief supplies are waiting at the Myanmar border as the military authorities have yet to allow them to enter.

"We are awaiting confirmation of exactly when the trucks carrying the aid can get across the border, and it may take time to reach Yangon, but we will be moving as fast as possible," said Janet Lim, director of UNHCR Asia Pacific bureau.

"We are really facing a major catastrophe," said UN emergency relief coordinator John Homes.