Emergency relief operations are winding down in Burma’s cyclone-struck delta, but aid workers say that with many survivors still without enough food or shelter, a return to normality is a long way off.
Since the storm pummelled the southern Irrawaddy Delta in early May, leaving 138 000 people dead or missing, aid workers have faced a logistical nightmare to reach the 2,4-million survivors.
”There’s still a big need just to deliver food, never mind everything else. If people are hungry they can’t rebuild their livelihoods or get their children back into school,” Save the Children’s Guy Cave said.
Regional bloc the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) said in a report on Monday that more than half the households affected by the storm were living with only one day’s food stocks in mid-June, and Cave said the situation was little changed.
”Most people have had some aid — very few have had enough,” Cave said.
But the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) recently announced it would cut relief flights operating from Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport into Burma’s economic hub, Rangoon, leaving aid agencies to transport their own supplies and signalling a move away from the emergency phase of the response.
”As of August 10 the full operation will be complete. From the beginning we were always intending to have three months of fast emergency response so we are phasing out our logistics services,” logistics head Kevin Howley said.
The winding down includes the withdrawal of WFP’s five helicopters along with warehousing space and dozens of trucks and boats previously available to aid agencies.
WFP’s logistics hub has brought 169 aid flights into Rangoon since the cyclone hit and ferried nearly 8 000 metric tonnes of aid to needy survivors.
Howley said the decision to close its logistics operation freed up money for other essential help.
”Nobody likes to see free services disappear, but if you can save money on logistics you might be able to do something else,” he said.
Aid agencies said they are ready to cope without WFP’s help, but admitted the picture remains desperate for many in outlying remote areas.
”With this sort of massive scale there’s no way you get what you need after three months,” Julia Newton-Howes, CEO of Care Australia, said.
”It’s a very mixed picture and in the remote areas people are still struggling to rebuild.”
Asean’s assessment found that 800 000 houses were destroyed or badly damaged by the cyclone, leaving people still living under makeshift structures of driftwood with plastic sheeting.
Care Australia has floated 200 000 bamboo poles on rafts from the northern state of Rakhine to the delta to help with house construction.
It is also distributing rice seed and hand tractors to assist farmers who lost their water buffalo in the floods.
”It’s absolutely critical that they get a rice harvest in now,” Newton-Howes said.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said the relief phase was far from over on Wednesday as he toured the delta before a meeting on Thursday with Burma’s ruling generals in the capital, Naypyidaw.
The junta drew worldwide condemnation for blocking foreign aid workers and relief shipments in the aftermath of the cyclone, relenting only after a personal visit by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. — AFP
