Kuala Lumpur, Sept. 27 (Reuters): People in Myanmar were already living on the edge before the government doubled fuel prices, raising the cost of just about everything and shoving many over the precipice.

In a country where more than a quarter of the 56 million people live on less than a dollar a day, the sudden announcement of fuel price hikes on August 15 became the tipping point of a crisis that had been building for a long time.

For retired headmaster U Sein, 82, and his wife Daw Nu, 80, the plunge in their quality of life has been nightmarish. “My monthly pension now buys only two cups of tea although it used to be enough for the monthly subsistence diet for my wife and me when I first retired over 20 years ago,” U Sein said in May, months before fuel prices went up.

The cost of living had soared since the failed uprising of 1988, residents say, but has really rocketed the past year.

“We saw incredible changes within a year,” food-stall owner Ma Ahmar said. “A viss (1.7 kg) of chicken is about 5,500 kyat, from 3,000 kyat last year, while a viss of palm oil costs 2,300 kyat, compared with 1,250 kyat last year.”

Fresh water and electricity are luxury items for many in Myanmar. “We have to queue for about an hour to fetch two pails of drinking water from the lake,” said Ko Myint Oo, a resident of Dala Township, just outside the capital. Similar conditions fuelled the 1988 rising, when the government suddenly raised rice prices and demonetised the kyat, rendering peoples’ savings worthless overnight. “It’s desperate,” said Sean Turnell, professor at Australia’s Macquarie University. “Middle-class Burmese are selling their possessions literally to survive. People can't go to work because they can't afford the bus fares.”