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Myanmar denies delays to cyclone aid, as relief effort lags
2008-06-03
Myanmar denied Tuesday any delays to cyclone aid, but the United Nations said the operation to help 2.4 million survivors is still moving too slowly one month after the deadly storm. Cyclone Nargis left 133,000 people dead or missing when it ploughed across Myanmar one month ago, laying waste to vital farmlands and wiping remote villages off the map. For the first three weeks after the storm, Myanmar stonewalled international efforts to deliver aid, yielding only after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid a personal visit here to meet with junta leader Than Shwe. Ban left Myanmar saying he had convinced the senior general to allow a full-scale relief effort, but 11 days later, UN agencies say access remains spotty, with only a handful of foreign aid workers actually in the worst-hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta. Elisabeth Byrs, a UN spokeswoman in Geneva, said that about 1.3 million people out of the 2.4 million affected by the cyclone have now received some form of foreign aid. Many of the one million survivors still languishing with little help live in remote villages inaccessible by land, aid agencies say. But the government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar newspaper insisted that the recovery was on track, and that farmers were ploughing devastated fields that have been soaked in sea water and littered with human and animal corpses. "Myanmar was able to successfully carry out the relief and rehabilitation operation in a short time although it was hit hard by the severe storm," it said. "Relief supplies from abroad to be donated to the storm victims are flowing continuously to the country by planes," the paper said. "The relief supplies team accepted the items at the airport and transported them to the storm-hit regions without delay." Chris Kaye, the country chief for the World Food Programme, said the aid effort was improving, but warned more needs to be done. "It's gathering pace, it's gathering momentum. It's not enough, it's still not enough," he told AFP. "We know that we haven't been able to access all areas in terms of the way we would like, the way we would have done in another situation, but we're making progress," he said. Highlighting the difficulties, the first WFP helicopter to arrive in Yangon on May 22 only made its first trip to the delta on Monday, spokesman Paul Risley said. Nine other helicopters have spent days waiting in Thailand, expected to fly to Myanmar at the end of the week, but it remained unclear when they could actually go into the delta, he added. Myanmar has created a task force with UN and Southeast Asian officials to clear obstacles to delivering aid. But the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ( ASEAN ) said that its so-called "Emergency Rapid Assessment Team" deployed on Friday would take three weeks to prepare its initial report, and that complete findings might not be ready until mid-July. AFP reporters who have entered the delta say that military and police continue to stage roadblocks throughout the region. Many villages visited by AFP are still devastated, with people scavenging for food and struggling to stay dry under makeshift shelters in the monsoon rains. Many of the villagers are farmers whose fields have been flooded with sea water. The animals they used for ploughing have drowned and their stocks of seeds and fertiliser destroyed. But the New Light insisted Tuesday that farmers had already begun starting to plant the new rice crop, which must get into the ground before the end of June. "Farmers of storm-hit regions are able to resume their agricultural work," the paper said, claiming that sea water had already been washed from the fields. Experts warn that Myanmar faces food shortages or even famine if the new crop is not planted on time.
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