Corporate governance and business entities in Myanmar Myanmar businesses and corporate governance Aung Naing Oo

Corporate governance and business entities in Myanmar

Myanmar businesses and corporate governance

Aung Naing Oo

            Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) took more than a year in 2013 to study Myanmar’s policies on investment. It included Corporate Governance in all the studies and reviews conducted in each sectors. Unfortunately it pointed out that Myanmar has almost no policy framework on Corporate Governance. OECD said the Companies Act of 1914 (The Burma Companies Act 1914), the Myanmar (Burma) Companies Rules 1940 and the Myanmar (Burma) Companies Regulations 1957 in effect at that time does not include internationally accepted and recognized basic principles on Corporate Governance. While the majority of the ASEAN countries were implementing Corporate Governance frameworks based on OECD’s basic principles Myanmar has yet to do any of those.

            Private businesses and companies almost disappear completely after Myanmar went through socialist economic system for more than 26 years. The country was no longer in touch with international practices and accepted norms in the private economic sector. After 1988, market economy was revived but citizens engaging in businesses were more occupied with survival and existence of the companies they formed rather than following international practices and norms. There was lack of knowledge in Corporate Governance in Myanmar.

            Anyhow, at a time when Myanmar was trying to enter into international business community and when efforts were being made toward development of capital market now is the time when the government and private sector need to make a concerted effort toward establishing a good Corporate Governance.

What is required in Corporate Governance?

            Of the basic principles of Corporate Governance the most important were the rights of the shareholders and equitable treatment of shareholders. All shareholders should have the opportunity to obtain effective redress for violation of their rights. The basic rights of shareholders were systematic registration of shareholding, ability to buy, sold or transfer shares, obtaining regular information about the company, electing and removing board of director members and to participate in the profit of the company. Shareholders also have the right to know, approve and participate in matters like amending the company’s Memorandum and Article of Association, issuing of new shares and unusual transfer of shares.

            Another important requirement in Corporate Governance is the role of the stakeholders. The rights of the stakeholders were established by law or through mutual agreements but there must be active co-operation between corporations and stakeholders in creating economic development, jobs, and the sustainability of financially sound enterprises. In some countries the rights of stakeholders were established by laws such as labour, commercial and environmental.

            Disclosure and transparency is also another requirement in Corporate Governance. Timely and accurate disclosure must be made on all matters regarding the corporation including the financial situation, performance, ownership and governance of the company.

            This is the sector where the majority of companies in Myanmar were weak and failing. Most of the companies kept news about their companies in the dark. They were very weak in transparency and openness. A good Corporate Governance is measured at the minimum by the timely disclosure of all material information. Material information is any information about a company or its products/services that is likely to change the perceived value of the company or its products/services when it is disclosed to the public. In other words, these are information that was vital for a shareholder or investor to decide on investing in the company or to vote at the general meeting and thus it must be disclosed in a timely manner.

            The duties and responsibilities of the board of directors is part of Corporate Governance. The board is responsible for guiding corporate strategy, monitoring performance of the company personnel, achieving an adequate return for shareholders while preventing conflicts of interest and balancing competing demands.

Another important board responsibility is to oversee the risk management system and systems designed to ensure that the corporation obeys applicable laws, including tax, competition, labour, environmental, equal opportunity, health and safety laws. In our country, we still lack boards of directors that had these fundamental capabilities.

What was done in Myanmar?

            Efforts were made starting from 2013 to fill in the gap on Corporate Governance in Myanmar and to establish the necessary ground for it. In his trip to OECD in France during 2013 Directorate of Investment and Company Administration Director General had requested support for Corporate Governance matter in Myanmar.

            In 2014 OECD drew up an OECD-Southeast Asia Corporate Governance Initiative program and Myanmar hosted the first OECD-Southeast Asia Corporate Governance meeting. Subsequent meetings were held in Viet Nam, Lao and Cambodia annually from 2015 to 2017. The fifth and final meeting was held in Yangon on March 2018.

            In addition to these meetings Myanmar also participated in OECD Corporate Governance Round Tables and requested assistance toward establishing a firm Corporate Governance in Myanmar and consistently made preparations under the guidance and instruction of the government.

Myanmar Companies Law and Corporate Governance

            Myanmar Companies Law was enacted on 6 December 2017 and came into effect starting from 1 August 2018. The weaknesses of Companies Act of 1914 were reviewed and starting from the drafting stage matters relating to Corporate Governance was included systematically in accordance to the time, international norms and practices.

            The nature, rights and powers of shares were included in Section 60 and 61 of the Myanmar Companies Law. Section 83 to 88 contain enactment on transfer of share and Section 99, 157, 186, 188, 260 and 261 describe the rights of shareholders to view, inspect and acquire company’s information. Section 146, 148 and 150 to 154 prescribe the rights of shareholders to attend meetings. Section 17, 25 (d), 116, 121, 146, 151, 173 and 345 prescribe the rights of shareholders to vote on the decision made by the company. Through these, the rights of shareholders were fully protected.

            Myanmar Companies Law Section 192, 193, 194, 196, 200, 201, 289 (f) and 302 protects the rights of shareholders and ensures equitable treatment of all shareholders, including minority shareholders.

            As the old law didn’t fully describe the duties of the directors, this was included in the new law.  The new law includes powers and duties of directors, restrictions on power of directors as well as taking legal actions for inappropriate actions of the director(s).

Section 90 to 95, 97, 99, 189 and 241 prescribe details about disclosing information about the company.

In addition to supporting Myanmar’s standing in the World Bank’s annual Doing Business Report enacting the new law help ease local business persons to do businesses. More importantly it was an important foundation stone toward establishment of a good Corporate Governance in Myanmar.

Company directors’ guide

            The role of company directors is very important whenever the word Corporate Governance is mentioned. The main weaknesses of the majority of companies in Myanmar were not fully understanding the Companies Law and directors’ ignorance or not fully understanding the dos and don’ts. As these may not be fully comprehensible by reading the law alone, DICA had posted a Company Directors Guide at its websites www.dica.gov.mm and www.myco.dica.gov.mm in both Myanmar and English.

Myanmar Institute of Directors

            With the aims of establishing Corporate Governance and raising capacity of individual directors in Myanmar companies, Myanmar Institute of Directors was formed in March 2018 with the support of International Finance Corporation.

            The Institute conducted workshops, courses and other programs to raise the capacity of the directors in Myanmar companies. Myanmar’s first licensed (certified) director course was jointly conducted with Singapore Management University from 1 to 3 April 2019 producing 36 licensed (certified) directors. As more programs will be conducted it will establish good foundation for Corporate Governance in Myanmar.

OECD Corporate Governance Frameworks in Myanmar: A Fact-Finding Survey

            OECD sent an expert group to Myanmar to assess the actual situation of Corporate Governance in the country and a Fact-Finding Survey report was published in September 2010. The report said the main weaknesses of Myanmar companies were found to be shareholders not knowing their rights including the right to vote, ignorance and misunderstanding about the information published by the company, directors not knowing their duties and responsibilities and not giving access to company information.

Corporate Governance Code

            OECD started a Corporate Governance Reform Project in January 2018 to support the development of Myanmar capital market. DICA, SECM (Securities and Exchange Commission of Myanmar) and OECD signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Yangon for Cooperative Activities on 2018 November for the project. As per the MOU a Corporate Governance Reform Advisory Committee was formed with OECD experts, officials from DICA, SECM and Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), local and foreign experts.

            Corporate Governance Reform Advisory Committee coordinated on meeting programs, prepares discussion points for the committee meeting, provides meeting hall and required supports to hold committee meeting and distributed news and information to the public.

            Work processes were started in February 2019 and by 2019 November OECD’s draft report on Myanmar Corporate Governance will be submitted to the Advisory Committee. DICA and SECM were jointly striving toward publishing a final report by end 2019 to draw up a Corporate Governance Code.

What is important?

            For the establishment of an effective Corporate Governance, a strong law frame, procedure frame and organizational frame are required. Only when the economic sectors depend on those frames can there be benefit to the private sector. The government had been systematically conducting matters for widespread acceptance and practice of Corporate Governance in Myanmar. Before 2020 a Corporate Governance practice appropriate for Myanmar’s situation will be setup.

            The most important will be the need for public companies that were not public listed companies and big companies in Myanmar to strengthen and put in place Corporate Governance. All need to note that companies that were weak in Corporate Governance will disappear in the future market. – translated by Handytips

Befriending and working with dolphins

 Befriending and working with dolphins

Maung Thar (archaeology research)

            I was excited as I sat in hull of the small boat that was paddled along the flowing Ayeyawady River. I was sitting between two fishermen, one at the bow and another at the stern of the boat as they skilfully rowed and guided the boat.

            Ko Tha Chan sitting at the bow was striking the boat hull rhythmically with a short stick. The stick was like a drumstick used on a drum set in a rock band.

            “If they are around and hear the sound of my stick, they’ll come” he said. So I kept my gaze on the water that has yet to show anything yet. I was with the two fishermen between Mingun and Kyaukmyaung in the Ayeyawady River hoping to see the world famous Ayeyawady dolphins working together with the local fishermen to catch fish. This is the home of the Ayeyawady dolphins where the fishermen befriended and worked with them.

            Dolphin lovers from all over the world come to this place to see fishermen and dolphin cooperating to catch fish.

            “They remember the way I strike the stick. We fishermen has different way of striking a stick and a dolphin associated to a fisherman respond to the particular way a fisherman strikes a stick. It is like a fisherman having a specific dolphin as a friend or a partner and that dolphin respond to that fisherman.” What Ko Pan Sein said as he rowed the boat from the stern was quite interesting.

            Of the ten fishing villages between Mingun and Kyaukmyaung, fishermen from villages of Sin Kyun, Aye Kyun, Sein Pan Gon, Myit Kan Gyi, Hinthama, Se The and Myit Soon fish in cooperation with dolphins. A fishing boat had two fishermen with one rowing the boat and another handling the net. The rower had two oars, a short one and a long one. The short one was used for normal rowing while the long one was used as a pushing pole when the boat was in shallow water.

            “There are a lot of fishermen but the dolphin remembers the specific fisherman it works together with. Of course it didn’t remember the fisherman as a person but in a way the fisherman strikes the stick. On our part we remember our dolphin as they have different faces!” said the two as I was kept in awe by their words.

            Even though some time went by and not a dolphin came into view even though Ko Tha Chan was striking his stick regularly.

            “We just have to seek out where they are this way. If we can’t find them we asked those on shore about them. As the dolphins stay in a group and they regularly went up to the surface to breath, those on shore usually could see them. It looks like my dolphins are not here. Don’t worry, we’ll find them,” he said.

            Dolphins are mammals and they couldn’t stay beneath the water for long and they came up to the surface to breath. As they breathe, they blow out waters so the fishermen were said to be able to identify their partner dolphin at sight. An average Ayeyawady dolphin is six feet long and had a circumference of about four feet.

            As our boat approaches a sandbank near the middle of the river suddenly we saw two dolphins poking their heads out of the water. Ko Tha Chan immediately said, “Those are my dolphins. They’re here because they heard the sound of my sticks. My group had three dolphins. Just watch, they’ll signal once they find fish.”

            As he said that a dolphin stuck a tail fin straight up the water surface and then hit the water with a big splash. Ko Tha Chan said this was a signal to follow it and rowed the boat to follow the dolphins.

            Soon the dolphin stuck a tail fin straight up again. This was another signal to prepare for casting the net as it had found fishes beneath the water said Ko Tha Chan who then stood up in preparation to cast his net.

            The dolphin leader that had stuck a tail fin was then seen swimming in a circle while other dolphins were doing the same. They were said to be circling the fishes tighter and tighter into a small circle and once the fishes were huddled together, the dolphin wiggles it tail fin above the surface of the water which was an indication to cast the net.

            As the lead weighted net was casted fishes remaining outside the casted net were feasted upon by the dolphins. The dolphins were said to never feast on the fishes in the net as they seems to have an understanding with the fishermen that the one in the net was for the fishermen while only fishes outside the net was theirs. They also have the uncanny knack of indicating to cast the net at a shallow depth so that some fishes remains outside the net for them rather than having the whole school of fish caught in the net if it was casted in deep water.

            As I looked in wonder at the way the two fishermen and dolphins cooperate to catch fish, my thoughts drifted toward the dolphins.

            Documentaries on Ayeyawady dolphins and fishermen cooperating to fish were shot and screened by television stations from Japan and Germany in 2007 and 2008 making the world knew more about these animals.

            In the world dolphins, whales and dugongs were the only mammals to live in the water. Of the more than 30 dolphin species in the world, Ayeyawady dolphins are the only freshwater dolphin and were zoological called Orcaella brevirostris.

            The earliest record of Ayeyawady dolphin was made by Sir Richard Owen who found it in the harbour of Visakhapatnam on the east coast of India. From 1871 to 1879 an English Naturalist John Anderson explored along Ayeyawady River and found the Ayeyawady dolphins for the first time in its namesake river. On his return to England, he read a paper titled “Description of a new cetacean from the Irrawaddy River, Burma” at Zoological Society of London where he used the term Ayeyawady (Irrawaddy) dolphin for the dolphin he found. Later, when same species were found elsewhere, they were also called Ayeyawady dolphin.

            Professor G.H. Luce published a research paper titled Ancient Pyu in the Journal of Burma Research Society vol. 27, Part III (1937). Among the writings of Tang Dynasty on the Pyu, a word “River Pig” was used to describe an animal in the Ayeyawady River which is most likely the Ayeyawady Dolphin indicating that the animal has been thriving in the river for more than a thousand years.

            Ayeyawady dolphins were found not only in Myanmar but also at Chika Lake in Odisha State, India; Mahakan River, Borneo Island, Indonesia; Songkla Lake in Thailand and in the Mekong River. Anderson recorded his sighting of Ayeyawady Dolphin in Ayeyawady River between Yenangyaung and Bhamo but was now only found in upper Mingun area.

            Six locations along the 275 miles stretch of Ayeyawady River between Mingun and Bhamo were designated as protected areas for Ayeyawady dolphin by Wildlife Conservation Group and Fishery Department.

            Once the river was full of dolphins but according to a survey conducted in 2014 there remains only about 70 dolphins. Despite the strict control against catching of dolphins and preventing battery shock fishing that kills the dolphins too, two dead dolphins were found recently. As the memories of the fishermen befriending and working with dolphins remain permanently etched in my mind, I thought that it is very important for the locals to value and cherish the dolphins and preserve and protect them. – translated by Handytips

လင္းပိုင္မ်ား ႏွင့္ မိတ္ေဆြဖြဲ႕ျခင္း

ေမာင္သာ(ေရွးေဟာင္းသုေတသန)

          တသြင္သြင္စီးဆင္းေနေသာ ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္ေရျပင္ေပၚတြင္ ေရစုန္ ႏွင့္ အတူ ေျဖးညင္းစြာ ေလွာ္ခတ္ေနသည့္ ေလွငယ္ ထဲတြင္လိုက္ပါကာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ စိတ္လႈပ္ရွားေနမိပါသည္။ေလွဦးရွိ ေရလုပ္သား ႏွင့္ ေလွပဲ့တြင္ ေလွကို ေလွာ္ခတ္ေနသည့္ ေရ လုပ္သားအၾကား၊ ေလွ၀မ္းအလယ္တြင္ ထိုင္ေနသည့္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္သည္ သူတို႕ လုပ္ေနသမွ်ကို မည္သို႕မွ် မေမးဘဲ ၾကည့္ ေန မိပါ၏။

          ေလွဦးတြင္ ထိုင္ေနေသာ ကိုသာခ်မ္းအမည္ရွိ ေရလုပ္သားက တုတ္တိုေလးတစ္ေခ်ာင္းျဖင့္ ေလွနံရံကို စည္းခ်က္ညီ ညီေခါက္ေနသည္။တစ္ေပခန္႕ရွိမည့္ ထိုတုတ္တိုေလးသည္ တီး၀ိုင္းမ်ားတြင္ ဒရမ္တီးသည့္ တုတ္တံႏွင့္ ပုံသ႑ာန္ တူကာ အရင္းတြင္ က်ပ္လုံးခန္႕တုတ္၍ အဖ်ားသို႕ ရႈးေနသည္။

          “ဒီနားမွာသူတို႕ရွိေနရင္ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ တုတ္သံေၾကာင့္ ေရာက္လာၾကလိမ့္မယ္”ဟု ကိုသာခ်မ္းကေျပာေနသျဖင့္ ကၽြန္ ေတာ္သည္ ေရျပင္ကို မ်က္စိတစ္ဆုံးၾကည့္ေနသည့္တိုင္ မည္သည့္ အရာကိုမွ် မေတြ႕ရေသးပါေခ်။ကၽြန္ေတာ္သည္ ျမန္မာ ႏိုင္ငံ အထက္ပိုင္း၊ မင္းကြန္း ႏွင့္ ေက်ာက္ေျမာင္းအၾကား ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္အတြင္း၌ ကမၻာေက်ာ္ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ေရလုပ္ သားမ်ား အတူတကြ ငါးဖမ္းပုံကို ကိုယ္ေတြ႕ၾကည့္ရႈႏိုင္ရန္ ေဒသခံ ေရလုပ္သားႏွစ္ဦးႏွင့္ အတူ ေလွတစ္စီးျဖင့္ ထြက္လာခဲ့ ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။ကၽြန္ေတာ္ေရာက္ရွိေနသည့္ မင္းကြန္းႏွင့္ ေက်ာက္ေျမာင္းအၾကား ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္ အပိုင္းအျခားသည္ ကမၻာ ေက်ာ္ ေရခ်ိဳလင္းပိုင္မ်ား ေနထိုင္သည့္ ေနရာတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည္။ ဤေနရာ၀န္းက်င္တြင္ရွိသည့္လင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္  ေရ လုပ္သား မ်ားႏွင့္ အတူ ငါးဖမ္းၾကသျဖင့္ ထိုထူးျခားသည့္ ဓေလ့ ကို ၾကည့္ရႈရန္ ကမၻာအႏွံ႕မွ လင္းပိုင္ ခ်စ္သူမ်ား လာေရာက္ ေလ့ရွိၾက သည္။

          “သူတို႕က ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ တုတ္သံကို မွတ္မိတယ္ဗ်၊ တံငါေတြက တစ္ေယာက္နဲ႔တစ္ေယာက္ တုတ္ေခါက္ပုံခ်င္း မတူ ၾကေတာ့ သူ႕လင္းပိုင္၊ ကိုယ့္လင္းပိုင္  မတူၾကဘူးေပါ့ဗ်ာ၊ လင္းပိုင္ေတြက သူတို႕မွတ္မိတဲ့ အသံရွိတဲ့ဆီဘဲ လာတတ္ၾကတာ“

          ေလွေလွာ္ေနသူ ကိုပန္စိန္၏ စကားက စိတ္၀င္စားဖြယ္ေကာင္းလွသည္။

          မင္းကြန္း ႏွင့္ ေက်ာက္ေျမာင္းအၾကားတြင္ ငါးဖမ္းလုပ္ငန္း ျဖင့္ အသက္ေမြးၾကသည့္ ေက်းရြာ ၁၀ ရြာရွိသည့္ အနက္  ဆင္ကၽြန္း၊ ေအးကၽြန္း၊ စိန္ပန္းကုန္း၊ ျမစ္ကမ္းႀကီး၊ ဟသၤာမ၊ ဆယ္သည္ႏွင့္ ေျမစြန္းရြာမ်ားမွ ေရလုပ္သားမ်ားသည္  လင္းပိုင္ မ်ား ႏွင့္ တြဲဖက္ကာ ကြန္ပစ္ ငါးရွာေလ့ရွိၾကသည္။ကြန္ပစ္ တံငါေလွ တစ္စီး တြင္ ေရလုပ္သားႏွစ္ဦးလိုက္ပါကာ တစ္ဦးက ေလွကို ေလွာ္ခတ္၍ က်န္တစ္ဦးက ကြန္ပစ္ေလ့ရွိသည္။ ေလွေလွာ္ခတ္သူသည္ ေလွာ္တက္အတိုတစ္ေခ်ာင္းႏွင့္ အရွည္ တစ္ေခ်ာင္းယူလာေလ့ရွိသည္။ ေလွာ္တက္အတိုျဖင့္ ေလွကိုေလွာ္ခတ္ၿပီး ေလွကို ေလွာ္ခတ္၍မရသည့္ ေသာင္စပ္၊ ေရတိမ္ ပိုင္းႏွင့္ ျမစ္ကမ္းအနီးေနရာမ်ားတြင္ ေလွာ္တက္အရွည္ကို ထိုး၀ါးသဖြယ္ အသုံးျပဳသည္။

          ”ငါးဖမ္းသမားေတြက အမ်ားႀကီးရွိေပမယ့္ လင္းပိုင္ေတြက သူတို႕နဲ႕ အတူ ငါးဖမ္းေနက် သူေတြကို မွတ္မိတယ္ဗ်။ လူကိုမွတ္မိတာေတာ့ မဟုတ္ဘူးေပါ့၊ ေလွကို တုတ္နဲ႕ရိုက္တဲ႕ အသံကို မွတ္မိၾကတာ၊ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ကေတာ့ ကိုယ့္လင္းပိုင္ ကိုယ္မွတ္မိတယ္၊ သူတို႕က တစ္ေကာင္နဲ႔တစ္ေကာင္ ရုပ္ခ်င္း မတူဘူးဗ်”

          သူတို႕ႏွစ္ေယာက္ေျပာျပေနသမွ်သည္ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အတြက္ စိတ္၀င္စားဖြယ္ခ်ည္းသာ ျဖစ္ေနေတာ့သည္။

အခ်ိန္အေတာ္ၾကာ ေလွာ္ခတ္လာသည့္တိုင္ မည္သည့္လင္းပိုင္ကိုမွ် မေတြ႕ရေသးပါေခ်။ ကိုသာခ်မ္းက တုတ္ကို မွန္မွန္ ေခါက္ေနသည့္တိုင္ လင္းပိုင္က မလာေသး။

”သူတို႕ရွိတဲ့ေနရာကို ဒီလိုပဲ လိုက္ရွာရတယ္၊ မေတြ႕ရင္လဲ ကမ္းေပၚက လူေတြကို လွမ္းေမးရတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ၊ သူတို႕ ေတြက ေရေအာက္မွာအုပ္စုဖြဲ႕သြားေနၾကတာ၊ ခဏခဏ ေရေပၚကို ေခါင္းေဖာ္ၿပီး အသက္ရွဴတတ္ၾကေတာ့ ကမ္းေပၚက လူ ေတြက ျမင္ရတယ္ဗ်။ ခု ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ့ေကာင္ေတြ ဒီနားမွာ မရွိေသးလို႕ျဖစ္မယ္၊ မပူပါနဲ႕ ဆရာႀကီး၊ ေတြ႕မွာပါ”

လင္းပိုင္တို႕သည္ ေရေန ႏို႕တိုက္ ေသြးေႏြး သတၱ၀ါမ်ားျဖစ္ၾကၿပီး ေရေအာက္တြင္ အခ်ိန္ၾကာျမင့္စြာေနေလ့မရွိၾက ဘဲ ေရေပၚသို႕ ေခါင္းေဖာ္က ေလရွဴတတ္ၾကေသာေၾကာင့္ လင္းပိုင္မ်ား ေရာက္ရွိေနသည့္ေနရာကို ျမင္ႏိုင္ၾကသည္။ လင္းပိုင္ မ်ားသည္ အသက္ရွဴၿပီးလွ်င္ ေရေပၚတြင္ ေရမ်ားကိုမႈတ္ထုတ္တတ္ၾကသျဖင့္ ေရလုပ္သားမ်ားသည္ မိမိတို႕၏ လုပ္ေဖာ္ ကိုင္ ဖက္ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားကို အေ၀းမွပင္ ေတြ႕ျမင္ကာ မွတ္မိၾကသည္ဟု ဆိုေပသည္။ဧရာ၀တီလင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္ ပ်မ္းမွ် အလ်ား ေျခာက္ေပ ေက်ာ္ရွိၾကၿပီး လုံးပတ္မွာ ေလးေပ ေက်ာ္ရွိၾကသည္။

ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ေလွက ေရစုန္တြင္ တစ္ျဖည္းျဖည္း ေလွာ္ခတ္လာစဥ္ ေရလယ္ ေသာင္တစ္ခုအနီးသို႕ေရာက္လာခ်ိန္ ၌ ခပ္လွမ္းလွမ္းေရျပင္၌ လင္းပိုင္ႏွစ္ေကာင္ ေခါင္းေဖာ္ကာ ေလရွဴေနသည္ကို ျမင္လိုက္ရသည္။ကိုသာခ်မ္းက

”အဲဒါ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အေကာင္ေတြဘဲဗ်၊ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ တုတ္သံၾကားလို႕ ေရာက္လာၾကတာ”ဟု ေျပာလိုက္သည္။

လင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္ ေရလုပ္သားမ်ားက တုတ္တိုေလးျဖင့္ ေလွနံရံကို ရိုက္ခတ္သျဖင့္ ထြက္ေပၚလာေသာတုန္ခါမႈကို သိရွိၾကသည္။ တုန္ခါမႈက ေရျပင္ကို ျဖတ္သန္းသြားသျဖင့္ ထိုတုန္ခါမႈ လမ္းေၾကာင္း အတိုင္း ကိုသာခ်မ္းေျပာသည့္သူ႕မိတ္ ေဆြမ်ားသည္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ေလွႏွင့္ မနီး မေ၀းသို႕ ေရာက္ရွိလာၾကျခင္းျဖစ္ေပသည္။

”ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ အုပ္စုက သုံးေကာင္ရွိတယ္၊ ၾကည့္ေန၊ၾကည့္ေန၊ ငါးေတြ႕ရင္ အခ်က္ေပးလိမ့္မယ္“

ကိုသာခ်မ္းေျပာၿပီး မၾကာမီမွာပင္ လင္းပိုင္ အၿမီးတစ္ခုက ေရေပၚသို႕ ေထာင္တက္လာသည္ကို ျမင္ရသည္။ ယင္း အၿမီးသည္ လင္းပိုင္အုပ္စု ေခါင္းေဆာင္၏ အၿမီးျဖစ္ၿပီး ေရေအာက္တြင္ ငါးမ်ားေတြ႕သျဖင့္ အခ်က္ျပျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း  ကိုပန္ စိန္က ရွင္းျပသည္။ကၽြန္ေတာ္ အထူးပင္ စိတ္၀င္စားမိပါသည္။

ခဏအၾကာတြင္ လင္းပိုင္က အၿမီးကို ေရေပၚတြင္မတ္ေနေအာင္ ေထာင္ထားရာမွ အထက္ ေအာက္လႈပ္၍ အၿမီးႏွင့္ ေရျပင္ကို ရိုက္ခ်လိုက္သည္။ သူ႕ ေနာက္လိုက္ခဲ့ရန္ ေခၚျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ကိုသာခ်မ္းကေျပာျပကာ ဆူးေတာင္ကိုေဖာ္လ်က္ ေရွ႕မွကူးခတ္သြားသည့္ လင္းပိုင္ေနာက္သို႕ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႕ ေလွကိုေလွာ္ခတ္ လိုက္ပါသြားခဲ့သည္။

          လင္းပိုင္တို႕၏ အခ်က္ျပမႈမ်ားသည္ ေရလုပ္သားမ်ားႏွင့္လင္းပိုင္မ်ားအၾကား နားလည္ၾကသည့္ ထူးျခားေသာ ဆက္ သြယ္ေရးသေကၤတမ်ားျဖစ္သည္။ ခဏအၾကာတြင္ လင္းပိုင္ကအၿမီးကို ေရျပင္ေပၚတြင္မတ္ေနေအာင္ေထာင္လိုက္သည္။ ေရ ေအာက္တြင္ ငါးအုပ္ကိုေတြ႕ေနသျဖင့္ကြန္ပစ္ရန္ အခ်က္ေပးျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ကိုသာခ်မ္းကေျပာကာ ေလွဦးတြင္ မတ္တတ္ ရပ္လိုက္ၿပီး ကြန္ကို ေရထဲသို႕ပစ္ရန္ ျပင္ေနသည္။

          အၿမီးကို ေရေပၚတြင္ ေထာင္ျပထားေသာ လင္းပိုင္ေခါင္းေဆာင္သည္ စက္၀ိုင္းျခမ္းပုံသ႑ာန္ ေရြ႕လ်ားကူးခတ္ေန သည္ ကို ျမင္ေနရျပန္သည္။လင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္  စက္၀ိုင္းပုံလွည့္ပတ္လ်က္ ငါးမ်ားကို တစ္ေနရာတည္းတြင္ စုမိေစရန္ ေမာင္းသြင္းေနျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။က်န္ေသာ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားက ငါးမ်ားျပန္႕ထြက္မသြားေစရန္ ပိတ္ဆို႕ ၀ိုင္းပတ္ထားသည္။ယင္းသို႕ ျပဳလုပ္ျခင္းကို လင္းပိုင္မ်ား ငါးေျခာက္၊ ငါးစု၊ ကြန္ခ်က္ျပျခင္းဟု ဆိုၾကသည္။ ေဒသအေခၚ “စီးခို” သည္ ဟု ေခၚၾကသည္။ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္ ေရလယ္ေခါင္တြင္ ထြန္းေနေသာ ေသာင္မ်ား၏ ေရလက္ၾကား ေနရာမ်ား၊ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္ေရစီးေၾကာင္း ေကြ႕၀ိုက္စီးဆင္း ေလ့ရွိသည့္ ေသာင္ေကြ႕ေနရာမ်ားႏွင့္ ေရတိမ္ေနရာမ်ားတြင္ စီးခိုေလ့ရွိၾကသည္။

          ေရေအာက္တြင္ ငါးးမ်ားစုမိလွ်င္ လင္းပိုင္သည္ အၿမီးကို ေရေပၚတြင္ ဘယ္ညာ ယိမ္းျပ သည္။ ထိုအခ်ိန္တြင္ ေရလုပ္ သားက ကြန္ကိုပစ္ရသည္။၀ိုင္းစက္ကာ ေရေပၚသို႕ ၀ဲပ်ံက်သြားသည့္ ကြန္အတြင္းမိသြားသည့္ ငါးမ်ားကို လင္းပိုင္တို႕က စား ေလ့မရွိဘဲ ပိုက္ကြန္အျပင္တြင္ ေျပးလႊားေနၾကသည့္ ငါးမ်ားကို ဖမ္းယူ စားေသာက္ၾကသည္။ ႏႈတ္ခမ္းသားအဖ်ားတြင္ ခဲသီး မ်ားတပ္ထားသည့္ ပိုက္ကြန္သည္ ေရထဲသို႕ အ၀ိုင္းလိုက္ က်သြားရာ ပိုက္ကြန္ ႏႈတ္ခမ္းအျပင္မွငါးမ်ားသည္ လင္းပိုင္အတြက္ ၊ ကြန္အတြင္းမွငါးမ်ားသည္ ေရလုပ္သားအတြက္ဟု သတ္မွတ္ေၾကာင္း လူႏွင့္လင္းပိုင္တို႕ သေဘာတူညီထားသည့္ အလား ထူးျခားလွေပသည္။ ပိုက္ကိုဆြဲတင္လိုက္ခ်ိန္တြင္ ပိုက္အတြင္းပါ မလာသည့္ ငါးမ်ား ႏွင့္ ကြန္၏ေအာက္ေျချမစ္ၾကမ္း ျပင္တြင္ က်န္ေနသည့္ ငါးမ်ားကိုလည္း လင္းပိုင္မ်ားက ဖမ္းယူ စားေသာက္ၾကသည္။

          ေရလုပ္သားႏွင့္ အက်ိဳးတူ ငါးဖမ္းလုပ္ငန္းေဆာင္ရြက္ေနသည့္အတြက္ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္ ကြန္အတြင္းသို႕ငါး အပါ မ်ားသည့္ ေရနက္ပိုင္းတြင္ ကြန္ခ်က္ျပေလ့မရွိၾကဘဲ ယင္းတို႕အတြက္ ေ၀စု မ်ားမ်ားရ ႏိုင္သည့္္ ေရတိမ္ပိုင္းေနရာမ်ားတြင္ သာ ကြန္ခ်က္ျပေလ့ရွိသည္မွာ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္တို႕၏ ထူးျခားဆန္းႀကယ္သည့္ ဥာဏ္စြမ္းရည္ဟု ဆိုရေပမည္။

          ကၽြန္ေတာ္သည္ ကိုသာခ်မ္းႏွင့္ ကိုပန္စိန္ ဟူသည့္ ေရလုပ္သားႏွစ္ဦး လုပ္ကိုင္ေနသမွ်ကို ရင္သပ္ရႈေမာစြာ ၾကည့္ရႈ ရင္း ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားအေၾကာင္းစဥ္းစားေနမိခဲ့သည္။

          ကမၻာေပၚတြင္ ေရေနသတၱ၀ါမ်ားအနက္ ေသြးေႏြး ႏို႕တိုက္သတၱ၀ါမိ်ဳးစိတ္သည္ လင္းပိုင္၊ ေ၀လငါး ႏွင့္ ေရ၀က္ဟူ၍ သုံးမ်ိဳးသာရွိသည္။ ယင္းတို႕သည္ အမ်ားအားျဖင့္ ေရငန္ေဒသ ပင္လယ္သမုဒၵရာမ်ားတြင္ေနထိုင္က်က္စားေလ့ရွိၾကသည္။ ကမၻာေပၚတြင္ လင္းပိုင္မ်ိဳးစိတ္ ၃၀ ေက်ာ္ရွိသည့္အနက္ ေရခ်ိဳေဒသတြင္ ေနထိုင္က်က္စားေသာ လင္းပိုင္မ်ိဳးစိတ္သည္  သတၱေဗဒ အေခၚ Orcaella brevirostris ဟု အမည္တြင္သည့္ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္တစ္မ်ိဳးတည္းသာရွိေပသည္။

ကမၻာေပၚတြင္ ပထမဆုံးေသာ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ိဳးစိတ္ကို ဆာရစ္ခ်တ္အို၀င္ ဆိုသူက ၁၈၅၂ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ အိႏၵိယ ႏိုင္ငံ အေရွ႕ဘက္ကမ္းေျခရွိ ၀ိစာခပတ္နမ္ဆိပ္ခံ(Harbour of Visakhapatnam) အနီးတြင္ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ၁၈၆၆ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ အေစာဆုံး မွတ္တမ္းတင္ခဲ့သည္။ ၁၈၇၁ ခုႏွစ္ မွ ၁၈၇၉ ခုႏွစ္ အတြင္း အဂၤလိပ္လူမ်ိဳး သဘာ၀သိပၸံ ပညာရွင္ ဂၽြန္အန္ဒါ ဆင္(Naturalist John Anderson)သည္ ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္ရိုးတစ္ေလ်ာက္ သုေတသနခရီးထြက္ခဲ့စဥ္ ႏႈတ္သီး၀ိုင္း၊ မီးခိုးေရာင္ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားကို ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္အတြင္း၌ ပထမဆုံး ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့သည္။ ဂၽြန္အန္ဒါဆင္သည္လန္ဒန္ၿမိဳ႕သို႕ျပန္လည္ ေရာက္ရွိေသာ အခါ သူ၏ ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့မႈမ်ားကို လန္ဒန္ သတၱေဗအသင္းႀကီးသို႕ (Description of a new cetacean from the Irrawaddy River, Burma) အမည္ျဖင့္ စာတမ္းတစ္ေစာင္ တင္သြင္းခဲ့သည္။ သူ၏ စာတမ္းတြင္ သူ ေတြ႕ခဲ့ရ ေသာ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားကို ဧရာ၀တီလင္းပိုင္ (Irrawaddy Dolphin) ဟု ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့ရာမွ ယင္းေရခ်ိဳလင္းပိုင္မ်ိဳးစိတ္မ်ားသည္ ဧရာ၀တီလင္းပိုင္ဟု အမည္ တြင္ခဲ့သည္။ ေနာက္ပိုင္းတြင္ အျခားႏိုင္ငံမ်ား၌ ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့သည့္ မ်ိဳးတူလင္းပိုင္မ်ားကိုလည္း ဧရာ၀တီလင္းပိုင္ဟုပင္ ေခၚဆို ခဲ့ၾကသည္။

          ပါေမာကၡ လုစ္(G.H Luce) သည္ ၁၉၃၇ ခုႏွစ္က ထုတ္ေ၀ခဲ့သည့္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသုေတသနအသင္း ဂ်ာနယ္၌ Ancient Pyu ေခါင္းစဥ္ျဖင့္ ့စာတမ္းတစ္ေစာင္ေရးသားခဲ့သည္။ တန္ မင္းဆက္ သမိုင္းသစ္တြင္ ပ်ဴ လူမ်ိဳးမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ေရးသား ထားေသာစာပိုဒ္၌ ဧရာ၀တီလင္းပိုင္ကို ျမစ္၀က္(River Pig)ဟု ေဖာ္ျပထားေၾကာင္း ပါေမာကၡလုစ္က ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့သည္။ ယင္းအခ်က္ကိုေထာက္ထား၍ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္ ပ်ဴလူမ်ိဳးမ်ား ရွိခဲ့သည့္ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ ၁၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ ကပင္ ဧရာ၀တီ ျမစ္အတြင္း၌ ရွိေနေၾကာင္း သိႏိုင္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။

          ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္သာမကအိႏၵိယႏိုင္ငံ ၊ ၾသရိသ ျပည္နယ္ပင္လယ္ကမ္းအနီးရွိ ခ်ီလ္ကာ ေရ အိုင္ (Chilka Lagoon)၊အင္ဒိုနီးရွားႏိုင္ငံ၊ ေဘာ္နီယိုကၽြန္းရွိ မဟာကန္ ျမစ္(Mahakan River)ႏွင့္ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံရွိ ဆြန္ကလာကန္ (Songkla Lake) ႏွင့္ မဲေခါင္ျမစ္အတြင္း၌လည္း ေတြ႕ျမင္ႏိုင္ၾကသည္။ဧရာ၀တီလင္းပိုင္မ်ားကို အန္ဒါဆင္ ေတြ႕ခဲ့စဥ္က ေရနံ ေခ်ာင္းၿမိဳ႕ ႏွင့္ ဗန္းေမာ္ၿမိဳ႕ အၾကားတြင္ ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့ရေၾကာင္းမွတ္တမ္းတင္ခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း ယခုအခါတြင္မူ မင္းကြန္း အထက္ပိုင္း ဧရာ၀တီ ျမစ္ေၾကာင္းတြင္သာ ေတြ႕ရွိႏိုင္ေပသည္။

          မင္းကြန္းမွ ဗန္းေမာ္အၾကား (၂၇၅ )မိုင္ ရွည္လ်ားသည့္ ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္ေၾကာင္းတစ္ေလ်ာက္ကို ငါးလုပ္ငန္း ဦးစီးဌာန ႏွင့္ သားငွက္ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးအဖြဲ႕က ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးနယ္ေျမအျဖစ္ အပိုင္း (၆) ပိုင္းသတ္မွတ္ထားသည္။ (၁)ဗန္းေမာ္ အထက္ရွိ ျမေစတီရြာမွ စင္ခန္းအထိ၊ (၂) စင္ခန္းမွ ေရႊကူ ၿမိဳ႕အနီး ဒုတိယ ျမစ္က်ဥ္း အထိ၊ (၃)  ဒုတိယ ျမစ္ က်ဥ္းမွ တေကာင္းအထိ၊ (၄) တေကာင္းမွ စမၸနကို အထိ၊ (၅) စမၸာနကိုမွ ေက်ာက္ေျမာင္း၊တတိယ ျမစ္က်ဥ္းအထိ ၊ (၆) ေက်ာက္ေျမာင္း၊တတိယျမစ္က်ဥ္းမွ မင္းကြန္းအထိ ျဖစ္သည္။

          ယင္းအပိုင္း ေျခာက္ခုအနက္ ေက်ာက္ေျမာင္းႏွင့္ မင္းကြန္းအၾကားတြင္ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ား အမ်ားဆုံးေနထိုင္ လ်က္ရွိၿပီး ထိုနယ္ေျမတြင္ လင္းပိုင္အေရအတြက္ အေကာင္ ၂၀ မွ ၂၃ ေကာင္အထိ အၿမဲ ေနထိုင္လ်က္ရွိသည္။ ထို႕ ေၾကာင့္  ၄၆ ဒသမ ၂၅ မိုင္ရွည္လ်ားေသာ ေက်ာက္ေျမာင္းႏွင့္ မင္းကြန္းအၾကား နယ္ေျမ အမွတ္(၆)ကို ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္ ထိန္းသိမ္း ေရး အဓိကဧရိယာ အျဖစ္သတ္မွတ္ကာ ေစာင့္ေရွာက္မႈမ်ားကို ျပဳလုပ္ေနသည္။တရားမ၀င္ ဖမ္းဆီးသတ္ျဖတ္မႈမ်ား၊ ဘက္ထရီ ေရွာ့တိုက္မႈမ်ား မရွိေစရန္ ၾကပ္မတ္ေပးလ်က္ရွိသည္။ သို႕တိုင္ေအာင္ပင္လြန္ခဲ့ ေသာ လအနည္းငယ္က ေသဆုံး ေနေသာ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္ ႏွစ္ေကာင္ကို ေတြ႕ခဲ့ရသည္။

ထူး ျခားလွသည့္ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္တို႕၏ ေရလုပ္သားမ်ားႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္း ငါးရွာၾက ပုံမ်ားကို ၂၀၀၇ ခုႏွစ္ႏွင့္ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္မ်ားတြင္ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံမွ (NHK)သတင္းဌာနႏွင့္ ဂ်ာမနီ ႏိုင္ငံ ရုပ္သံဌာနမ်ားက လာေရာက္ရိုက္ကူးကာ ထုတ္လႊင့္ျပသခဲ့ သျဖင့္ ကမၻာအႏွံ႕ထင္ရွားခဲ့သည္။

          ဧရာ၀တီျမစ္အတြင္း တစ္ခ်ိန္က အေကာင္ေရမ်ားစြာ ရွိႏိုင္ခဲ့သည့္ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားသည္ ၂၀၁၄ ခုႏွစ္ စစ္တမ္း မ်ားအရ ေကာင္ ေရ  ၇၀  ၀န္းက်င္သာက်န္ရွိသည္။ ေရလုပ္သားမ်ားႏွင့္အတူ ဆန္းၾကယ္စြာ ငါးရွာ ငါးဖမ္းၾကသည့္ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ား မ်ိဳးတုံး ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္သြားမႈ မရွိေစရန္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနခ်ိန္တြင္ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ ဧရာ၀တီ လင္းပိုင္မ်ားအေပၚ တန္ဖိုး ထား ခ်စ္ျမတ္ႏိုးၾကရန္အေရးႀကီးလွေၾကာင္းစဥ္းစားမိရင္း လင္းပိုင္မ်ားႏွင့္မိတ္ေဆြဖြဲ႕ခဲ့သည့္ ခရီးစဥ္ကို အမွတ္ရေန ဆဲျဖစ္ပါ သည္။