Myanmar Cyclone Survivors Left Without Shelter, Aid Workers Say

By Paul Tighe

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- More than 75 percent of people needing shelter after Myanmar's cyclone are without tarpaulins for emergency protection six weeks after the storm devastated the southern Irrawaddy River Delta, aid workers said.

``There are still people who need a roof over their head,'' John Sparrow of the International Federation of the Red Cross said yesterday after returning from the delta, according to the United Nations IRIN news service. ``They are resilient, and they are doing the best they can for themselves, but it isn't enough.''

Only 22 percent of people in need have been given protective materials by international agencies, the IFRC said. The UN estimates that only 160,000 households have received some form of emergency shelter such as plastic sheeting.

The UN is trying to aid more than 2.4 million people affected by the May 2-3 storm. The military junta in the country formerly known as Burma is still complicating the relief effort by imposing restrictions on international aid workers, such as limiting their visits to the delta to two to three days at a time, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement yesterday.

Aid agencies have yet to establish how many homes were destroyed when Tropical Cyclone Nargis caused a tidal surge to sweep 35 kilometers (22 miles) inland through the delta, Myanmar's main rice-growing region.

Assessment Team

A team of 250 people from UN agencies is now visiting 30 of the worst-hit townships and plans to have an assessment completed by June 24, according to IRIN.

``We are struggling generally in terms of information flow,'' IRIN cited Graham Eastmond, the Bangkok-based coordinator of Emergency Shelter Cluster, which groups relief agencies, as saying yesterday. As many as 480,000 families may need some shelter materials, the ESC estimates.

Supplies of tarpaulins are hampered by a shortage caused by the relief effort needed for survivors of the May 12 earthquake in China's Sichuan province that killed more than 69,000 people and affected 3.3 million people in the region.

The UN's appeal for Myanmar was 62 percent funded as of yesterday, OCHA said in a statement. More access to the delta region by international aid workers is needed to bring relief to the worst-hit areas, it said.

``The quality and availability of water remains a major health concern,'' it said in its latest report yesterday.

A shortage of funds may affect food, shelter and medicines reaching the region in coming weeks, the UN said last week. Survivors will probably need food aid for a year because Nargis destroyed fields, preventing planting, Paul Risley, a WFP spokesman, said in Bangkok last week.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net.