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Tsunami survivors still struggling despite aid outpouring
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-19 16:23
Ummi Kalsum, 30, sits amid stacks of boxes of food stamped with donor logos
in a tiny house in Indonesia's Aceh province, which she rebuilt herself from
debris left after last year's tsunami.
She retrieves water every two days from a pick-up point set up by aid
organizations, and is not going hungry, but says she is far from getting her
life back.
"What I really want is cash to start a business. It is impossible to hope for
aid for a lifetime -- people won't help us forever. We need cash to start work,"
she tells AFP.
While the world responded to the to Indian Ocean catastrophe on December 26,
2004 with unprecedented generosity, survivors say much more is needed for the
massive reconstruction effort in the region.
Others say that the aid effort has been hampered by poor distribution, lack
of information, poor management of funds, the slow pace of delivery and outright
corruption.
More than 10.5 billion dollars has been pledged to tsunami-hit nations since
the disaster, according to the United Nations office of the Special Envoy for
Tsunami Recovery, with seven billion dollars handed over so far.
The unprecedented outpouring has paid for everything from Indonesian fishing
boats to Thai schools.
Charlie Higgins, the emergency coordinator for the UN's World Food Programme
(WFP) in Banda Aceh, the ravaged capital of Aceh province, gives the aid
operation generally high marks, especially given the Herculean task at hand.
"At the start, it was perhaps a bit slow but when it actually came on tap, it
basically addressed all the key problems, in all the main areas," he tells AFP.
"When you don't have the time to do a considered very highly planned
response, then it's best to err on the side of overdoing something."
But survivors across the region now say that although they are grateful for
everything they have received in the wake of the tsunami, the international aid
effort was far from seamless.
Access to aid supplies, coupled with lack of information about aid
distribution points, proved to be a major problem in both Indonesia and
Thailand.
"I went to the place where they were distributing it and they said it's
finished -- there was nothing left for me," said Sulaiman, a 38-year-old
restaurant owner who lost his wife, daughter and home in the tragedy.
In the poor Thai fishing village of Baan Nam Khem, the flood of aid is
apparent in everything from the freshly paved roads to the rows of identical
cinder-block homes, each one painted the same shade of green.
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