Tsunami survivors still struggling despite aid outpouring
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-19 16:23

But 26-year-old Duangrat Manu says that while government assistance had poured into her community, residents did not know how to get it.

"Many people in the village don't know what's going on," she says, explaining that she paid to rebuild her own house rather than apply for government funds.

"My father is old -- I have to take care of him. So I didn't have time to do all the paperwork from the government."

Muhammad Adli Abdullah, the secretary general of Panglima Laot, a community organization forged in Aceh's maritime traditions which has been monitoring and coordinating donations to fishermen, says aid has not always matched needs.

Some 7,000 of the province's 20,000 boats were smashed by the giant waves, and 14,000 boats were donated -- "so that's good", says Adli.

"But they were all small boats, so they are only good for the coastal areas, not for open seas -- and it was mostly the open-sea boats that were destroyed."

In some places the problem has not been of too little aid, but too much.

V. Vivekanandan, chief executive of India's largest fishermen's organization, the South Indian Federation of Fisherman Societies, says distribution of funds remains a major concern.

"It is the most oversubscribed disaster in the history of India. There is an oversupply of aid. The problem is there are major constraints in making the best use of money," he explains.

And in Sri Lanka, the country's auditor general Sarath Mayadunne recently issued a report charging that corruption and poor management had doomed the aid effort in the South Asian nation.

"We have seen misappropriation of public funds. It is a lot of money we are talking about," he said, noting that nearly 15,000 families in northwestern Sri Lanka who were not affected by the tsunami had still received monthly pay-outs.

The WFP's Higgins freely admits the aid effort has been a learning process for the international community, and that mistakes have been made, but remains hopeful that the new year will bring continued relief to survivors in need.

"Recovery certainly wasn't in full swing by the middle of the year. I'd say recovery is certainly picking up now, every day, every week, but that wasn't the case probably until September," he says.

"I don't think it signals failure -- I think it just signals a lack of experience in things this big and a misunderstanding in the aid community, even as well as within the general public, about what was achievable in a shorter time frame."