The 2004 tsunamis left more than 286,000 people dead, 7,900 missing, and 1.6 million displaced in the costal regions of Asia and Africa. The disaster destroyed roads connecting villages, homes, and communities, leaving many survivors homeless with no personal belongings, or anywhere to go.
Even though relief organizations such as the International Federation of Red Cross, USAID, and UNICEF have done their best to provide and support relief efforts to devastated communities, there have still been some that have seen little relief aid thus far.
Yves Henocque, co-director of the Coastal Habitats and Resources Management Project, (CHARM) reported in a February 15, 2005 article written in the Bangkok Post, that more than 4,000 Thai communities were affected by the waves, including over 400 small fishing boat communities and 1,000 large fishing boat communities. Few of these communities have seen relief aid.
“As conflicts occur between villages, the aid has been piling up due to lack of information,” said Henocque. “The problem has been described as ‘the second wave of suffering’ as villagers argue with one another.”
According to the USAID, it is these worst-hit countries and communities that are having the most struggle in coordinating huge inflows of aid, making sure that pledge money is going to needy communities.
Now, nearly three months after the tsunamis government officials are beginning to take action, making sure aid is dispersed properly.
Due to the destruction of public records and government offices, corruption has been a problem with the major intakes of relief money that is provided to countries.
Ahmed Humam Hamid, chairman of the non-government organization Aceh Recovery Forum, said in a press release to Reuters News that, “one of the concerns in the Indonesian province was that aid funds would be used by the government in its fight against separatists.”
Because of concerns similar to those of Henocque and Hamid, Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB), hosted a conference with 150 ministers and aid officials to set up a special database that would monitor the distribution of aid and help eliminate corruption and build up of relief funds.
“Tsunami-hit countries and aid agencies agreed on Friday, March 18th, to adopt a new mechanism to keep track of aid and cut down on corruption as they move from the relief phase of the disaster to longer-term rebuilding,” stated Kuroda.
The new database would be a consolidated, transparent database that would use a tracking matrix for each country. Each country would have full responsibility to track their funds, said Kuroda.
While the Asian Development Bank has been trying to keep track of relief funding, they have calculated a $4 billion gap in funding that was supposed to be distributed to Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.
“Of course, we have some funding gaps as some country delegates indicated,” said Kuroda to Reuters News. “The fact some funding gaps remain does not prohibit us to start coordination, cooperation to rehabilitate and reconstruct the affected areas.”
And reconstructing affected areas is essential, as March 26, 2005 ended the relief phase of the Tsunami response and started the recovery and reconstruction phase.
Late March also brings new problems to devastated countries as the rainy season approaches. Countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia are all affected by the rainy season, which can bring anywhere from 49 to 430 inches of rain between the months of March and September. Since people are temporarily staying in tents until residential buildings are constructed, land slides pose problems of wiping out tented area. Flooding is also a problem that could lead to contamination of clean drinking water if reconstruction does not progress quickly and properly.
A Sri Lanka update posted by the USAID stated that, “with the rainy season approaching, building transitional shelters for families displaced by the tsunami takes on a new meaning. A newly-enforced buffer zone that prohibits the construction of residential buildings up to 100 meters from the coast in the south and 200 meters in the north and east, and a delay in the designation of government owned land outside the buffer zone for housing construction has presented challenges for USAID and its partners.”
More pressure is being placed on these relief organizations to help rebuild what was lost during the tsunamis. With new building criteria to follow and a lack of aid promised to many countries, it will be hard for aid workers to accomplish what they need to do to keep families safe from more destruction. By having the new funding tracking device in place, hopefully aid relief progress will continue more smoothly than it has been.
