/ 8 May 2008

Aid misery for Burma cyclone victims

A few aid shipments had arrived in Burma’s main city by Thursday, but the planeloads of supplies and heavy equipment needed to help millions of cyclone victims remain largely stranded outside the country.

In a dramatic development, the ruling junta agreed to accept United States emergency aid after last weekend’s cyclone, allowing at least one military plane to deliver supplies to Rangoon.

But the secretive regime’s reluctance to allow foreign experts and other dedicated relief flights into the country has caused intense frustration and compounded the misery for a million people homeless and short of food and water.

Without transport and fuel, aid arriving piecemeal on commercial flights into Rangoon cannot be distributed effectively in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta region in southern Burma, which was submerged in Saturday’s cyclone.

“The bottle-neck is getting [aid] out in the delta. That needs boats, helicopters, trucks … there are upward of one million people in need of help,” said United Nations spokesperson Richard Horsey.

Horsey, from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said about 5 000 square kilometres of the cyclone-hit region remains under water.

And he confirmed that while some shipments have arrived over the past two days, no dedicated aid flights have landed in Rangoon.

“UN aid has begun to arrive in Rangoon by cargo plane,” he said. “Some have come in on Thai commercial flights, Thai cargo flights. More is expected today [Thursday].”

Even if they win permission to launch a full-scale relief effort, aid organisations face tremendous logistical problems including flooded roads, scarce fuel supplies and a shortage of boats as many were destroyed in the storm.

United Nations Children’s Fund spokesperson Shantha Bloemen said the fund was having to distribute the supplies it had in Burma by road into the disaster zone, and was relying heavily on the resources of the Burma Red Cross.

“The biggest concerns at the moment are those areas that haven’t been reached and the more than 200 temporary shelters getting congested, where people have gathered without clean water and sanitation,” she said.

“You need people to coordinate where the equipment is going, there are complicated logistics involved,” she said. “And how it will work … this is what doesn’t seem clear yet.”

Horsey said that without immediate assistance, the death toll — officially at nearly 23 000 with more than 42 000 missing — would climb.

“We have to be fearful that most of these [missing] people will be dead,” he said, adding that the thousands of bodies rotting in floodwaters posed a grave health risk to survivors.

“Fairly clearly, we’re dealing with a situation where there could be a second round, where people start dying from water-borne diseases.”

The US and France have both offered to send naval ships, currently on exercise in the region, but their offers remain unanswered on Thursday.

OCHA has said that some of its experts are scheduled to travel to Burma aboard a relief plane that was due to leave Italy with 25 tonnes of aid on Wednesday but still has not departed.

The World Food Programme said it was sending several aircraft loaded with high-energy biscuits and other critical supplies — which would be the first to land into the city — but their arrival had not been confirmed on Thursday.

The UN refugee agency said on Wednesday that 22 tonnes of supplies were stuck at the border with Thailand, waiting for the authorities in Rangoon to allow the aid to enter the country.

Horsey said visa restrictions are hampering the plans of dozens of experts from the UN and other civil-society groups that are still working on breaking through government red tape.

“That’s a great concern because these are the people … who are very experienced operating in relief situations,” he said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have led calls for Burma’s generals, who deeply mistrust most of the outside world, to admit international disaster relief.

“It should be a simple matter. It’s not a matter of politics. It’s a matter of a humanitarian crisis,” Rice said. — AFP