Local Activists Blast Relief Effort

By MIN LWIN
The Irrawaddy News

Burmese humanitarian activists have complained that the distribution of aid to cyclone survivors is uncoordinated and is restricted to people in urban areas.

A well-known activist from Mandalay, Than Myint Soe, said on Tuesday that private donors and international aid agencies are not cooperating or sharing information while distributing aid to cyclone survivors in the Irrawaddy delta.

“The villages near roads or along the rivers get assistance,” the social activist said. “But rural villages located far from roads and rivers haven’t received any food, clothes or even fresh water.”

Than Myint Soe, a coordinator for the Mandalay Charity Group for Nargis, added: “What is the point of not sharing your information? The organizations and private donors are simply not coordinating their assistance.”

He said that Mandalay Charity Group for Nargis, which he founded along with businessmen, doctors and philanthropists from Mandalay, had delivered upward of 160 million kyat (US $136,750), including food, clothes and emergency aid to an estimated 90,000 cyclone survivors in Dedaye and Pyapon townships.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Tuesday, Than Myint Soe said that the makeshift charity planned to build schools in Dedaye and Pyapon, as well as high brick walls as barriers in case of floods in the future.

“Well constructed buildings and strong walls can save lives,” he said. “When I traveled to Dedaye and Pyapon to deliver supplies, I could see that the villagers that survived the cyclone winds and the tidal wave took shelter in well-built structures.”

Nyi Lynn Seck, a 29-year-old blogger and social activist from Rangoon who, along with four colleagues, formed a makeshift group which they called “Handy Myanmar Youths to reconstruct homes in the delta, said that to date they have built more than 100 houses, or what they call “budget huts,” for cyclone survivors in the Laputta area.

However, the activist complained that corrupt local officials were siphoning off many of their building materials and that their disaster management skills were inefficient.

“I was disappointed because some villages did not receive the materials we tried to supply,” Nyi Lynn Seck said. “Officials from the Ward and Village Peace and Development Council stole them. For example, they gave us proposals for 10 x12-foot huts, but they took materials and tools to build 15 x 30-foot houses,” he said.

An urgent concern is the high price and scarcity of materials and tools, Nyi Lynn Seck said, noting in his blog that they were having trouble finding wood to build “budget huts” in Laputta.

He said that another setback to aid distribution was the disorganized method the Burmese military government relied on. He said the authorities did not use a computerized system for the logistics of the disaster management and that they only worked on paper, so much of the help was “delayed, forged and wasted.”

In Bogalay, rebuilding and rehabilitation has still not been initiated in remote villages of the township, according to a Buddhist monk who spoke to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday.

The monk said that the Htoo Company, the junta-linked contractors with a monopoly on rights to rebuild in the cyclone-ravaged Bogalay area, had constructed only roofing shelters supported by poles at a state school in the village of Ahkare Gyi in Bogalay Township, but that no buildings had yet been constructed.