Asia-Pacific News
Burma relief effort reaches too few, too slow, says UN (Roundup)
By DPA
May 12, 2008, 11:28 GMT

Bangkok/Yangon - Ten days after Cyclone Nargis crashed into Myanmar, claiming up to 100,000 lives, disaster relief is still reaching 'too few and too slowly' because of constraints imposed on the operation by the government, a senior United Nations official said Monday.

'We are reaching people today but we are reaching too few and too slowly,' said Terje Skavdal, the regional representative for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) which has been leading the relief efforts for Myanmar out of Bangkok since May 2 to 3 when Cyclone Nargis swept over the central coast of the country in the region's worst natural disaster since the December 26, 2004, tsunami.

The Cyclone Nargis calamity has been compounded by a reluctance on the part of Myanmar's military masters to facilitate the delivery of aid and a reluctance to grant visas to foreign relief experts.

'Normally, you will within three to four days be up to speed in such a situation like this,' Skavdal told a press conference. 'The fact that we are at day 10 now shows how delayed we are in the response,' he said.

International aid has started to flow in to Myanmar, with several large shipments of goods expected Monday, but aid agencies concur that much more should have arrived in the ten days after the storm.

While emergency supplies are now arriving in Yangon, the former capital which was also hard-hit by Nargis, getting the stuff out to the countryside is a 'major logistical challenge,' said UNOCHA spokesman Richard Horsey.

Many of the hardest-hit townships were in the low-lands of the Irrawaddy delta, in areas that are only accessible by boat.   

The UN is currently holding negotiations with senior Myanmar generals in Naypyitaw, the new capital, in an effort to persuade them to grant visas to 60 'key' relief experts from the UN and other international agencies to facilitate the emergency programme in Myanmar, said Horsey.

The World Food Programme (WFP), which has been handling logistics for the UN effort, estimated that less than 10 per cent of the international staff and materials and 'general logistics apparatus' that are needed are in the country, said WFP spokesman Marcus Prior. 'On the food side we think we need to be moving 375 tons of food a day into the effected areas,' said Prior. 'We're doing less than 20 per cent of that.'

The WFP estimates that it has been able to provide up to 30,000 affected people with two-week rations, but this pales in comparison with the 1.2 to 1.9 million people believed to have been affected by the storm.

Myanmar's ruling junta last week officially welcomed international aid in the catastrophic wake of the cyclone, but the country's xenophobic regime has thrown up obstacles to the aid effort, such as seizing a supply of high-energy biscuits from the World Food Programme Friday at Yangon International Airport because Myanmar officers wanted to distribute the aid themselves and refusing to grant visas to relief experts from the United Nations and aid agencies.

Since the weekend, Myanmar authorities have facilitated the delivery of foreign aid, but they continued to balk on Monday at letting in more foreign aid workers.

Aid began arriving in larger quantities on Monday. For instance, the first of three cargo planes with a total of 110 tons of food, tents, medical supplies, drugs, and pumps and generators for water and sanitation systems from Doctors Without Borders arrived in Yangon Monday morning.

Also on Monday, a US Air Force C-130 cargo plane flew from U-Tapao Airbase in Thailand, carrying 12,670 kilograms of water, mosquito nets and bedding and arrived in Yangon.

'This is a small salve for a much larger wound,' US Ambassador to Thailand Eric John said from U-Tapao, 120 kilometres south-east of Bangkok.

'In addition to supplies, it is absolutely crucial that response experts be allowed into Burma to help those struggling with the devastation that affects them,' the diplomat said, joining the rising chorus calling for the granting of visas to relief experts.