Bangkok - World aid for Myanmar's Cyclone Nargis has
amounted to 300 million dollars, or 2.5 per cent of what was spent on
the 2004 tsunami, aid agencies said Thursday as the first anniversary
of the storm approaches.
'The total tsunami support was 12 billion dollars while the
response to Nargis, which was very similar to the tsunami, was 300
million dollars,' David Verboom, spokesman for the European
Commission's Humanitarian Aid Office, said at a press conference
marking the anniversary.
The December 26, 2004, tsunami killed an estimated 220,000 people
in 11 countries rimming the Indian Ocean and left 500,000 people
homeless alone in Aceh, Indonesia, the area worst hit by the tidal
wave triggered by an earthquake off the coast of northern Sumatra.
Cyclone Nargis killed 140,000 in Myanmar, mostly in the Irrawaddy
Delta, where 500,000 people continued to live under tarpaulins one
year after the storm hit May 2-3.
'In the tsunami in Indonesia, we got in-kind donations double the
number we actually asked for,' said Bernd Schell, Myanmar officer for
the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
'In Nargis, a family got two tarpaulins, but for the tsunami,
victims got five to six tarpaulins because we had so many in stock,'
said Schell, who worked for the federation in Aceh before moving to
Myanmar.
Food also continues to be a problem for the victims of Nargis.
'Twelve months on, we at the World Food Programme find that we
will have to continue giving food assistance to many of the most
vulnerable people in the delta region,' World Food Programme
spokesman Paul Risley said.
'We anticipate providing food rations for a minimum of 300,000
people through the year,' he added.
Indonesia and Thailand, two of the countries hardest hit by the
2004 tsunami, had good infrastructure, logistics, public utilities,
dynamic economies and a lot of goodwill from the international
community. Myanmar has none of these.
Myanmar, a military-run country, is ranked as a pariah state among
Western democracies because of its poor human rights record and
refusal to implement democratic reforms.
Some of the initial efforts to assist the Nargis victims, such as
the US dispatching of its 7th Fleet to deliver relief aid, were
rebuffed by Myanmar's ruling generals, who downplayed the seriousness
of the disaster - the worst to hit Myanmar in decades.
Much of the initial assistance to the devastated delta region,
where 2.4 million people were left homeless and without food, was
provided by Myanmar's people themselves.
A full-scale international relief effort did not get under way
until two weeks after the cyclone hit as the junta eased up on
issuing visas for aid workers and logistics were put in place to get
assistance out to the countryside.
A United Nations flash appeal for emergency aid announced shortly
after the cyclone was 67-per-cent funded. Many donors balked at
giving aid that might find its way into the hands of the military
although aid agencies assured donors that all emergency aid would go
directly to the victims.
'It is clear that the political environment was a hindrance for
many donations,' Verboom said.
The European Union, which provided 39 million euros (51.54 million
dollars) in aid for Nargis has proven to be the largest single donor
to the disaster relief effort.
It was in keeping with the EU's past role in Myanmar, where it has
taken the lead as a provider of humanitarian assistance to the
Myanmar people while keeping economic sanctions on its ruling
generals.
'In 2007, the European Union was already providing at least a
third of the assistance to Myanmar, and that figure went up in the
wake of Nargis,' European Union head of operations in Myanmar Andrew
Jacobs said.
The EU is also taking a lead in providing funds for the
post-Nargis recovery. It has committed 33 million euros to a trust
fund designed to help people in the Irrawaddy Delta develop their own
livelihoods and income-generating activities in the aftermath of the
cyclone.
The target is to raise 100 million dollars for the fund in the
next few months.
'The fund will be used for projects implemented by the UN agencies
or international and local non-governmental organizations to help
people recover their livelihoods not only in the cyclone-affected
areas but also in other parts of the country,' Jacobs said.
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