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Thursday, September 29, 2005
Tsunami relief holds lessons for hurricanes
DESPITE the unprecedented global relief effort for the Indian Ocean tsunami, just 60 per cent of those affected in India and Sri Lanka said they got timely and adequate aid in the first 60 days.
A survey of affected families and aid workers in the two countries showed the relief effort succeeded in delivering aid to millions of people, according to the group that conducted the survey, the non-profit Fritz Institute, a San Francisco body that specialises in logistics for humanitarian relief.
Research supervisor Anisya Thomas said: 'Sixty per cent may be fabulous under the circumstances, but some very large number of people did not (get timely aid). There needs to be a very large effort to figure out what is good enough. We're talking about human life here.'
The survey report, Lessons from the Tsunami: Top Line Findings, showed problems similar to those on the US Gulf Coast after hurricane Katrina hit.
In India and Sri Lanka, about 60 per cent of the non-government aid groups surveyed said they did not have enough warehouse facilities and 40 per cent lacked adequate transport. They had enough supplies, but there were bottlenecks and they could not get the right items to the right place at the right time.
Families in both countries said old, used clothes were dumped in piles for them to pick through. They felt humiliated and the clothes were often wrong for the coastal climate.
In some instances, the most vulnerable, including the elderly, widowed and disabled, were excluded from relief distribution.
Government's role made a difference. In India, where the Government was the No. 1 provider of aid, affected families said they were satisfied with the visible role of the district level administrators in providing and co-ordinating relief. Eight-six per cent got help within 48 hours.
In Sri Lanka, where the military, medical organisations and religious groups were the top providers of aid, 39 per cent said they were rescued by the military but 61 per cent got no aid at all in the first 48 hours.
Fritz Institute director-general Lynn Fritz called the report a global wake-up call.
Source: The Age (subscription) - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
Sri Lanka court stays probe into Tsunami funds scam
Sri Lanka's Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a stay order sought by the Prime Minister and the ruling party's presidential candidate on an alleged scandal involving tsunami relief funds.
The court order would suspend the police criminal investigation department's investigation into a complaint lodged by the main opposition United National Party (UNP) against Rajapakse until the further hearing of the case which has been fixed for January 17, 2006.
The UNP alleged that Rajapakse had transferred the monies received by the government for tsunami relief assistance to a non-state account.
The Prime Minister dismissing the accusation of any wrongdoing pleaded through his lawyers that the UNP's accusation was a mere smear campaign ahead of the presidential election to be held on Nov. 17.
Rajapakse claimed that the allegation and the prolonging of theinvestigation were part of an orchestrated campaign by the UNP to mar his chances in the election and a violation of his fundamentalrights to equality and equal protection before the law.
Source: Xinhua - China
Monday, September 26, 2005
Tsunami aid misused in Sri Lanka
Wide spread corruption has been detected in the distribution of foreign and local tsunami aid in Sri Lanka, the country's chief auditor said on Sunday.
Large scale misappropriation was found in the north-western, southern and eastern regions, Auditor General Sarath Mayadunne said, commenting on a report in the daily, Sunday Island,, which said that he had blown the whistle on corruption.
'Yes, the figures mentioned in the newspaper report are correct,' Mayadunne said, adding that he will publish his Interim Tsunami Aid Audit Report this week after having presented it to members of parliament last week.
He said he could not say what percentage of the aid money had been siphoned off, but believed the numbers were large. Inefficiencies had also slowed the flow of aid, he said, noting that only 13.5 percent of foreign aid had been
utilised by the Sri Lankan authorities.
'There has been widespread misappropriation of funds. Initially, it was understandable because the proper system and controls were not in place, but even after the emergency phase was over, the irregularities continued,' Mayadunne said.
Mayadunne said out of Rs 49 million collected by two institutions, Rs 37 million ended up in a bank account, earning interest without being spent on tsunami survivors. Reconstruction has been slow, he said.
Only 1,055 houses had been rebuilt out of some 48,974, which were damaged by the December 26 tsunami that killed 31,000 people and left another million initially homeless. He found that some people had been paid Rs 250,000 as compensation for shacks that were worth only Rs.10,000.
There were many other weaknesses in the supply of financial assistance for damaged houses cited in the report. The auditor general found that foreign donors had abandoned 686 containers at the Colombo Port, as the Social Services Department and the Ministry of Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction had caused delays in the clearing of the aid cargoes.
The government allowed 506 vehicles to be imported duty-free into the country for tsunami relief work, but the authorities had no register of those vehicles or who was using them.
Source: Rediff - India
Tsunami Actually Aided Crops in Indonesia
From atop the coconut tree where he fled to escape the onrushing water, Muhammad Yacob watched the tsunami turn his rice paddy into a briny, debris-strewn swamp.
Nine months later, Yacob and his wife are harvesting their best-ever crop -- despite fears that salt water had poisoned the land.
'The sea water turned out to be a great fertilizer,' said Yacob, 66, during a break from scything the green shoots and laying them in bunches on the stubble. 'We are looking at yields twice as high as last year.'
Rice, the region's staple food, is not the only crop thriving on tsunami-affected land in Indonesia's Aceh province, which suffered the worst damage and loss of life in the Dec. 26 disaster.
Farmers say vegetables, peanuts and fruit are also growing well, spurring hopes that agriculture in the still devastated region will recover faster than expected.
But bumper harvests for some mask a very precarious future for most farmers in areas where a massive offshore earthquake caused the sea to crash ashore, experts say.
According to U.N. surveys, 81 percent of the 116,000 acres of agricultural land damaged by tsunami waves in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India and Thailand is again cultivable.
But experts say much fertile land remains under water or sand churned up from the ocean floor. Waves and mud have destroyed or clogged countless drainage systems. So many villagers died that there is a shortage of labor to clear the land and replant.
Yacob says he has received no tsunami aid from the government, and sighs as he points to a mangled threshing machine, rusting where it was tossed by the tsunami waves.
Besides his rice crop, the father of eight lost 1,000 cocoa plants in the tsunami, and has no money for seedlings.
Recovery in the worst-hit areas may take three to five years, said Bart Dominicus of the U.N. tsunami response program.
The largest earthquake in 40 years sent 60-foot waves crashing into coastal communities in Aceh and more than five miles inland. Of the 178,000 who died in the 11 tsunami-hit countries on the Indian Ocean rim, 130,000 victims were in Aceh province.
Nearly 50,000 acres of Aceh farmland were damaged, the local government estimates.
In the weeks after, many scientists warned it would take years until crops could be planted, noting that fields flooded with salt water usually become unsuitable for most types of cultivation.
"When I first got here there were preliminary figures booted about that half of the land would be lost," said Helen Bradbury, an agriculturalist with Mercy Corps, a U.S.-based charity. "But I wasn't so sure and neither were the farmers."
In at least some cases, their hunch proved correct.
Fields of lush, green rice now dot the coast, and surveys by the U.N. agency paint a more optimistic picture.
Researchers say high rainfall in most Indian Ocean countries washed out the salt quicker than expected. Higher yields in some plots are explained by rich top soil and the composting effect of other organic matter dumped by the tsunami.
"I am not sure the effect will last long, but for now it is a sort of tsunami bonus," said Bradbury.
The rice harvest is helping to restore some of the pre-tsunami rhythms of life to the countryside, where men like Yacob have farmed for 30 years and more. But it is still littered with damaged buildings and tent camps housing tens of thousands of survivors.
Men and women wearing wide-brimmed hats stand knee-deep in mud during long days of planting and harvesting. Villagers cycle to the fields and smoke from burning stubble makes for blazing sunsets.
The U.N.'s World Food Program says it still expects to be feeding around 750,000 tsunami victims well into next year.
And life remains tough even for farmers with fields full of crops.
Sur Salami has never grown corn higher -- his plants stand two feet taller than him. But when heavy rain coincides with a high tide, around half of his 5 1/2-acre plot floods. He says it never did before, and blames the tsunami for changing the coastline.
"The sea is around 50 yards closer now," he said. "But we cannot lose hope. Whom can I complain to, anyhow?"
Source: Newsday - Long Island,NY,USA
Thursday, September 22, 2005
World acclaim for tsunami relief work
The relief and rehabilitation work carried out by the State in the aftermath of the tsunami has received world-wide acclaim.
The news was disclosed by Officer on Special Duty, Relief and Rehabilitation, C V Sankar, while addressing a workshop on "Disaster Mitigation Technology - Demonstration and Training," at Annamalai University in Chidambaram on Wednesday.
Sankar said, "The State Government had successfully achieved the goal it had set out to reach, with the assistance of WHO, UNICEF, NGOs, health workers and the local community."
He also mentioned that this could not have been possible without dedicated officials like district Collector Gagandeep Singh Bedi.
He was all praise for Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for her support financially and otherwise to the district administration.
He noted that within a short span of time the State Government had passed more than 60 Government Orders. A Parliamentary delegation comprising Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members had appreciated the efforts of the State Government's and vowed to replicate the number of GOs.
He said the government had completed the first phase of its reconstruction work and was moving on to its second phase i.e. the construction of disaster proof houses.
The government had also promised to improve the economic condition of people residing in the coastal region, he noted."
Source: Newindpress - Chennai,India
Competition to Decide Tsunami Memorial
Thailand on Wednesday announced an international competition to design a memorial to victims of last year's tsunami, which left more than 200,000 dead or missing in the dozen Indian Ocean countries hit by its giant waves.
The memorial will be located in Phang-nga province in southwestern Thailand, which had most of the country's 5,400 dead. In addition to honoring the victims, the memorial will include a museum, organizers said.
'At that ground zero, we will commemorate all the people who lost their lives,' said Deputy Prime Minister Suwat Liptapanlop, who presided at a ceremony inaugurating the competition. 'It will be a place that will educate people so that they will know what happened.'
On the first anniversary of the Dec. 26 tsunami, a committee comprising five foreign architects and two Thais will select five design concepts as finalists, then develop the concepts with the aid of Thai architects, and pick the winner in May.
The design phase has a $1.2 million budget, including a $25,000 honorarium that is to be paid to each of the five finalists whose design is completed.
Construction of the winning design is expected to be finished by December 2008. The overall budget, to be provided by the government, will depend on the design, Suwat said.
At the ceremony, officials stressed that they were seeking submissions from all over the globe because the tsunami affected people from many countries. In Thailand, people from 37 different countries were among the dead.
Jit Phasompong, the vice governor of Phang-nga, said the project will help restore residents' confidence and courage, rehabilitate the environment, and attract people to the area to help revive tourism.
Suwat said the government sought to make the memorial a world class attraction, architecturally emblematic of Thailand in the same way the Sydney Opera House has come to symbolize Australia.
Source: ABC News - USA
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Overheads cut tsunami victims' aid
WORLD Vision's expenditure on overheads for the Asian tsunami is running at almost twice the rate promised, with 14 per cent of the donations spent so far directed towards administration costs.
And official figures from the organisation headed by Tim Costello reveal that nine months after the devastating disaster, World Vision has spent barely a quarter of the $106 million it has raised. Despite promising to limit administration costs to 7 per cent of the total money raised from ordinary Australians, companies and the federal Government, World Vision has already spent $3.2 million on overheads. While the organisation claims this is 3 per cent of the total funds raised, it is in fact about 14 per cent of the $23.5 million it has outlayed on relief. The trend in the figures, revealed in the Australian Council of International Development's second quarterly NGO report on the Asian tsunami, are mirrored in the spending by Red Cross and Oxfam and comes just a day after Mr Costello and his brother Treasurer Peter Costello toured Aceh, the Indonesian region hit by the Boxing Day disaster.
The Red Cross, which raised about $113.7 million for its tsunami appeal, more than any other Australian organisation, has spent $2.6 million on overheads -- 9.7 per cent of the $26.7 million of the money spent on projects. Oxfam, which raised about $28.3 million, has spent 7.96 per cent on overheads, or $840,000 of the $10.6 million disbursed so far, despite officially claiming the figure is 2.98 per cent in the ACFID report. Care Australia, which raised $44 million, has spent $1.8 million of the $16.8 million used so far -- 10.9 per cent. Caritas Australia has spent 11">The Australian: Overheads cut tsunami victims' aid [September 08, 2005]: "WORLD Vision's expenditure on overheads for the Asian tsunami is running at almost twice the rate promised, with 14 per cent of the donations spent so far directed towards administration costs.
And official figures from the organisation headed by Tim Costello reveal that nine months after the devastating disaster, World Vision has spent barely a quarter of the $106 million it has raised. Despite promising to limit administration costs to 7 per cent of the total money raised from ordinary Australians, companies and the federal Government, World Vision has already spent $3.2 million on overheads. While the organisation claims this is 3 per cent of the total funds raised, it is in fact about 14 per cent of the $23.5 million it has outlayed on relief. The trend in the figures, revealed in the Australian Council of International Development's second quarterly NGO report on the Asian tsunami, are mirrored in the spending by Red Cross and Oxfam and comes just a day after Mr Costello and his brother Treasurer Peter Costello toured Aceh, the Indonesian region hit by the Boxing Day disaster.
The Red Cross, which raised about $113.7 million for its tsunami appeal, more than any other Australian organisation, has spent $2.6 million on overheads -- 9.7 per cent of the $26.7 million of the money spent on projects. Oxfam, which raised about $28.3 million, has spent 7.96 per cent on overheads, or $840,000 of the $10.6 million disbursed so far, despite officially claiming the figure is 2.98 per cent in the ACFID report. Care Australia, which raised $44 million, has spent $1.8 million of the $16.8 million used so far -- 10.9 per cent. Caritas Australia has spent 11.7 per cent so far on administration costs.
Research analyst Jill Thompson from Givewell, an organisation that conducts research on charity, said it was "extremely important" for charities to pass on as much of the donations as possible. "If someone gives money to a cause ... I think what people want to see is that the money is spent in the way that they would hope would (most) benefit the victims."
World Vision's chief operating officer Toby Hall yesterday told The Australian the administration costs were bigger in the early days of the relief effort, but would begin to fall over the five-year period of the project.
The money spent to date reflected the emergency work such as the provision of shelter, sanitation and basic medical treatment that has already taken place, and the planning of "reconstruction" involving local governments and communities.
Mr Hall said the figure spent on overheads was predominantly used up in the first quarter of this year to cover company costs such as the processing of donations and transactions.
"What you'll see is in that very first period we've got quite a lot of overheads and in the second period the overheads come down, and in the third period the overheads will come right down," he said yesterday.
Asked why the administration expenses were calculated by dividing them into total revenues raised and not into the total money disbursed, Red Cross chief executive Robert Tickner said: "That was the advice we were given by ACFID as to the way we should do it."
Of the $4.9 million in Salvation Army Tsunami aid, not one cent was spent on overheads. The Christian World Service also incurred no overheads on tsunami aid in the last two quarters.
Source: Australian - Australia
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