Asia-Pacific News
Myanmar disaster relief underway by "remote control" from Bangkok
By DPA
May 15, 2008, 11:40 GMT

Bangkok - Efforts to pump millions of dollars of emergency aid to Myanmar for an estimated 2 million people affected by Cyclone Nargis were still being handled largely by 'remote control' out of Bangkok two weeks after the storm struck, aid officials said Thursday.

'We are getting the logistical system in place but its just taking a lot longer than it would normally take because its being done down the phone,' said Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), the UN agency that is heading Myanmar's relief effort out of Bangkok.

'It's all being done by remote control,' said Horsey.

Myanmar's ruling junta has reaped international criticism for failing to open the reclusive country up to the kind of logistical pipeline needed to get tons of emergency supplies out to remote areas in the Irrawaddy Delta - Myanmar's fertile rice bowl that was hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis that smashed into the central coastal region on May 2-3.

The cyclone claimed up to 130,000 lives and left up to 2 million people in need of food, water, shelter and medicine, according to UN estimates.

Only about 500,000 people affected by the storm have been reached by the relief effort, two weeks into the catastrophe.

According to the government's own figures, the death toll was 38,491 people, with another 27,838 still listed as missing.

More worrisome, Myanmar's military leaders, while welcoming aid, has made clear that they think they are up to the task of distributing it themselves.

'They have told me that they are confident that they can deal with the problems,' said Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who met with Myanmar premier Thein Sein on Wednesday.

Samak flew to Myanmar on Wednesday to deliver a personal request from UN Secretary General Ban Mi-moon that the generals grant more visas to foreign experts trying to get in. He failed to do so.

'They do not want anyone to intervene or teach them what to do,' said Samak.

While the aid push is working to some extent via government channels and semi-official channels such at the Myanmar Red Cross, which has 28,000 volunteer workers in Yangon and the Irrawaddy Delta, there are limitations to how much and how quickly the logistics are working.

'Where it is not working is the system that it plugs into,' said Horsey.

'Think about the air traffic control implications of having to bring 390 tons of food aid per day, when an average cargo plane can take 20 to 30 tons, so we're talking about one flight an hour,' he said. 'Think about the air control implications and the warehouses implication and about the trucks to get the food out.'

Horsey and other UN agencies continue to argue that foreign experts in logistics, water-purification, map-making, epidemiology and a host of other emergency-relief-related tasks are still necessary to make the Myanmar operation efficient and live-saving.

Although he acknowledged that more visas for aid experts have been issued in recent days, he noted many visas were of short duration and most experts were limited to staying in Yangon, the former capital.

'The real issue is that of movement restriction in to the delta. You can get the visas but you can't get in to the delta.'