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SINGAPORE: Despite damage to their offices, Singapore companies said their branches in Myanmar are coping well, and all of their personnel have been confirmed safe.
In the wake of Cylone Nargis, residents in Yangon have had to cope with soaring food prices, and lack of water and power.
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One of the Singapore companies that has operations in Yangon is SilkAir, which usually has 15 flights a week from Singapore to Yangon. But over the weekend, the company has had to cancel five flights because of the cyclone.
Since Monday, SilkAir's staff in Yangon have been busy helping the affected passengers get on a flight to Singapore.
Renu Nair, manager of media and marketing communications for SilkAir, said: "They're somewhat used to having intermittent power outages and therefore they're quite used to working in spite of disruptions to power.
"I suppose something as wide scale as this does take a bit of dealing with, but we've been able to quite quickly send over supplies and we hope that things will turn around quickly for them."
Many Singapore companies which have branches in Myanmar said that despite damage to their offices, their staff are now working to resume normal operations.
Some Singaporeans have yet to reach their relatives who are working in Myanmar because the lines of communication have been down.
The Singapore Embassy in Myanmar said that since Sunday, it has been working on at least eight such cases.
Ambassador Robert Chua said on the phone: "They call us on the phone in Yangon, or they come to the embassy in person telling (us) who to contact back home in Singapore. And we try through our telephone system to call back to Singapore. And this is how we've been able to help them communicate with their loved ones in Singapore."
He added that officials have already restored electricity to some parts of Yangon. - CNA/ac
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