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Most Myanmar survivors unreached by 'worst' disaster response
Bangkok (AFP) May 15, 2008 Most victims of Myanmar's cyclone remain without emergency food supplies two weeks after the catastrophe, experts said Thursday, with one calling it the worst disaster response in recent memory. Critical supplies are slowly making their way to survivors, but not nearly enough for the up to 2.5 million people who the United Nations says were severely affected by the storm. "I cannot recall a relief operation where, at least the international response, has been subjected to such delays. Where two weeks into it, we don't even have a decent assessment of the numbers affected," said Mark Malloch-Brown, a top official in Britain's Foreign Office. The UN said some 550,000 people now huddled in temporary shelters in the Irrawaddy delta, once an important agricultural zone and now a flooded and ruined region still littered with dead bodies. "People have been migrating outwards from the most affected areas in search of basic necessities," the report said. Those basic needs have gone largely unmet since the storm rammed into Myanmar's southwest and the economic hub Yangon on May 2 and 3. Aid groups say people remain in critical need of food, clean water, shelter and medicine, with the relief effort held up by the ruling junta's reluctance to let experienced rescuers in. "This is dangerously slow. And I would say that unlike the two very recent big disasters -- the tsunami and the Kashmir earthquake -- potentially it has a much greater risk of a second health crisis," Malloch-Brown said. "We are way behind the curve compared to any other international disaster in recent memory," he said here after meeting Thai officials. With no helicopters and a lack of experienced staff on the ground, World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Marcus Prior said the agency was struggling to reach hungry people. So far, WFP food had reached 50,400 people -- a tiny proportion of up to 750,000 of the survivors facing hunger and starvation. Myanmar says the storm left more than 66,000 people dead or missing. "We have 700 tonnes of rice, high-energy biscuits and beans in the affected areas," Prior told AFP. "We are working to get to the rest of them as quickly as possible." British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Thursday the United Nations will organise an emergency summit on the disaster, adding that it would be held in Asia. Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman from the UN's humanitarian arm, said that while a limited number of people had been reached with some aid, it did not necessarily mean their lives had been put back together. "If half a million people have been reached with one bag of rice, a banana and water, that's not the same as a proper response," she said. Another concern for aid agencies is whether they will have control over the distribution of their own goods, after Myanmar's reclusive military regime insisted that it could handle the delivery of goods itself. New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch has urged international donors to keep a close eye on their supplies to make sure they were not being siphoned off by the army in the impoverished country. Most aid agencies said they had no reports of any pilfering and were monitoring their supplies. The junta has said it will investigate any claims of misused aid. Bill Berger, the leader of USAID's response team, said that some reports on the issue were overblown, including suggestions that aid supplies are turning up for sale in markets. "Quite often there are just people sitting there and they get a blanket because people are handing out blankets. But they don't need a blanket, so they take it to the market and trade it," he said. After an international outcry over the regime's refusal to allow in foreign experts, some visas for aid workers are slowly being granted, but relief agencies said many more were needed if supplies are to reach people in time. EU aid commissioner Louis Michel told AFP on Wednesday that Myanmar could face a famine after the cyclone devastated the key rice-growing area. The UN food and agriculture organisation has said Myanmar needs 243 million dollars to buy rice seed and fertilisers to ensure it can plant its June rice harvest and start to feed itself again. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Share This Article With Planet Earth
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Myanmar moving cyclone survivors into camps: monks
Yangon (AFP) May 15, 2008Myanmar has moved tens of thousands of homeless cyclone survivors into government-run shelters, pushing them out of monasteries and schools, Buddhist monks from the disaster zone said Thursday. |
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