At the most recent Ayeyarwady Parliamentary session, one speaker brought an extremely important and pressing matter to everyone’s attention: Valentine’s Day.
Myint Myint San, who represents the city of War Kae Ma in the Ayeyarwady Region, reminded the attendees that Valentine’s Day was coming up on February 14, and asked what measures authorities were taking to ensure that unmarried couples wouldn’t be shacking up in local inns and hotels following a long day of romance, especially in the case of places where rooms can be rented on an hourly basis. She also inquired as to how establishments who allowed such sinning would be punished.
Speaking to 7Day, Ayeyarwaddy region Municipal Minister Kyaw Myint confirmed that various authorities, including the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism and the Myanmar Police Force, would be checking hotels, motels, and inns on Tuesday to make sure that no unmarried couples are sharing a room.
“We’ve put out a notice to hotels that they cannot accept couples who [normally] reside in the same city [as the hotel], and they’ve been warned to not accept couples who aren’t married, especially on Feburary 14,” Kyaw Myint said
It seems, however, that hotels themselves are less fussy about their patrons. An employee from a hotel in the town of Labutta explained, “We’ll accept [customers] as long as they have two NRCs [National Registration Cards]. They don’t need to give us any documents to prove whether they’re married or not, and we don’t have the right to ask them that either. Our rooms are double occupancy rooms, so regardless of whether you’re a couple or siblings, if you can give us two NRC cards, we can put that in our records and hand over the room key. We don’t really have a strong opinion on this topic. We won’t refuse customers. If they can provide the cards and we have a room, then we’ll accept them; if we don’t have a room, we won’t.”
One Pathein resident who didn’t want to be named was on the government’s side, explaining, “It’s good that they’re making an effort to stop young people from making a mistake on a day like this.”
However, others (rightfully) thought that this whole approach was unnecessary and futile.
Another anonymous Pathein resident told 7Day, “Personally, I’m not a fan of taking legal action in instances like that. In Myanmar, if a young person is 18 years of age, then they have the independence to make their own decisions. Additionally, this isn’t the kind of issue that they [the authorities] can properly pursue. If not that day [Valentine’s Day], then it’ll happen on another day. The most important thing is to educate people, such as when it comes to sexual health. After all, simply taking legal action against people will not make this issue go away.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
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