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Tsunami victims fight red tape
17/01/2005 19:33 - (SA)
Meulaboh - Three weeks after one of the worst natural disasters in global memory, some survivors of the Asian tsunamis were still grappling on Monday with bureaucracy and politicking amid a flurry of high-level visits to the region.
Touring tsunami-devastated areas of Sri Lanka, US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the island was moving swiftly towards the reconstruction phase as the US pulled back two military supply ships deployed for relief operations there.
"Sri Lanka has very rapidly passed the emergency phase," Wolfowitz said.
Wolfowitz said they would not stay longer than needed.
"We don't want to stay any longer than we are wanted. Most certainly not longer than we are needed," he said. Long-term aid
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin meanwhile travelled to Sri Lanka's hardest hit eastern district of Ampara and promised long-term aid.
"You have to be a stone not to be moved by this," Martin said after walking through the remains of flattened beachside houses in the town of Kalmunai.
"We will stay here as long as we are wanted," he said after inspecting relief operations by some 200 Canadian military personnel. "We will be here for a long time to come."
Indonesia has backtracked on a demand that foreign soldiers involved in humanitarian work in devastated Aceh province get out of the country within three months.
Defence minister Juwono Sudarsono said US and other forces, who have played a key role in reaching remote areas, could remain provided they scaled back their presence. 'Realm of death' In Thailand the leaders of Sweden, Norway and Finland were discussing reconstruction and efforts to identify the dead from the December 26 disaster.
Seeing forensics experts at work trying to identify thousands of bodies made clear the horror of the work, Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said: "It was as if to be on the doorstep to the realm of death," he said.
But despite the high-level visits some survivors battled difficulties such as impenetrable Indonesian bureaucracy.
"We are like persons who do not exist. We have been hit hard by the disaster, lost everything and are famished," said Busriadi, a fishermen from Tenggiri hamlet in what was once the village of Ule Lhee near Banda Aceh.
"Where is the food, the clothes and other relief we can see on television flowing into Aceh?" Documents
Busriadi, like thousands of others, lost his identity cards and other official documents to the sea, making his quest for aid a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Despite being reduced to begging government officials for help and spending much time shuttling from one place to another to try to get their paperwork in order, the results have always been the same: no aid.
Amrun Daulay of the social affairs ministry, confirmed to AFP that the paperwork was a must. "We have to make sure that the relief is not misused by those not needing it," he said.
- AFP
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