Residents of Nge Thu village in Bogale township plan recovery activities under the guidance of the UN Development Program last month. Pic: UNDP

AS relief efforts for victims of cyclone Nargis have gained pace, the United Nations and other aid agencies have expanded their focus to include figuring out ways to provide support for rebuilding livelihoods that were destroyed in the worst-affected areas of Ayeyarwady and Yangon divisions.

A clearer picture of the level of need for such assistance is expected to emerge when an ASEAN-led assessment team currently surveying the delta region presents its preliminary findings to a meeting of international donors in Yangon this week.

The report is expected to provide the basis for issuing another appeal to the international community to provide support for long-term relief and rehabilitation in cyclone-affected areas.

“In some places it is possible to plant crops, and people are in the mental and physical condition and want to plant crops,” Mr Sanaka Samarasinha, the deputy head of United Nations Development Program (UNDP), told The Myanmar Times on Friday.

“I think if we ignore that requirement we are going to be in a situation where a year or a year and a half from now some of these people will still be depending on relief items,” he said.

“It is also a question of self-respect and dignity,” he said, adding that the villagers he had met during a visit to the Bogale area last week were ready and willing to get back to work and were asking for seeds and power tillers that would allow them to do so.

“Of course they are getting food and that will have to continue, but at the same time we need to make sure that we get these people back into the field if they want to, so they can pick up their lives and take care of their families,” Mr Samarasinha said.

ASEAN is organising a roundtable conference for donors in Yangon on Tuesday, which will hear the initial report from the 300-member ASEAN assessment team.

Mr Samarasinha described the joint assessment as a unique exercise.
“It is unique for a number of reasons [including] that there is a regional organisation involved in this kind of work. In my memory there has not been any regional organisation that was part of a joint assessment like this, so it is also historic,” he said.

He said that by allowing more international aid workers into Myanmar starting late last month, the government had provided a huge boost in the effectiveness of aid distribution and other relief work.

“I think huge difference has been made, a sea change if you like,” Mr Samarasinha said.

“The way we have been able to access and move within the delta has been significantly changed. Especially for those UN organisations and NGOs that did not have existing programs in the delta, that was a major turning point for them,” he said.

He said there was recognition by the government that the role of the international community was critical in dealing with the aftermath the cyclone.
With about seven weeks having passed since the cyclone struck, Mr Samarasinha said emergency food supplies have reached most of the people affected by the cyclone, while effective healthcare has helped prevent major outbreaks of contagious diseases.

“I find that the delivery of food in particular seems to be happening fairly well but this does not necessarily mean that everybody has been getting the food that they need as regularly as they should,” he said.

“But the indications from various assessments and from my staffs [in the Ayeyarwady delta] are that the delivery of rice in fact has been taken place and most of the villages have been covered and regular deliveries are taken place,” he said.

On the health situation, Mr Samarasinha said that although there were no reports of major disease outbreaks, access to clean water in most of the areas he visited was still a significant problem as many village ponds had been contaminated with saltwater and corpses.

He said cooperation and generosity among the local communities has helped create positive humanitarian conditions in cyclone-affected areas.

“Something that is very important that we need to recognise is the fact that the communities in the delta helped each other and people within the villages stuck together.

“One of the things that has always struck me about this country is how closely knit the community is, how people help each other in times of trouble and how the households that are better off always take care of the households that are not well-off,” he said.

Mr Samarasinha said UNDP – which has been involved in providing livelihood support in the Ayeyarwady delta since 1994 and is the only major international development agency based in the area – could use its experience and human resources to serve as facilitator for international aid donors.

He said the agency would use these experiences to expand its activities of providing livelihoods to poor communities and creating awareness about natural disasters.

He said UNDP has so far provided food to 191,000 people in the delta and was implementing a food-for-work program to mobilise community support for cleaning and rebuilding essential infrastructure.

“We have a history of working in such a large number of villages – about 2600 of the affected villages, I think – and we are willing to be a facilitator in rebuilding the livelihoods of the people affected by cyclone,” he said.

Mr Samarasinha said UNDP was also in the process of expanding the coverage of its basic services package initiative to more than 250 priority villages, which will be selected based on the urgency of needs, in the five hardest-hit townships in the delta.

“UNDP is also helping villagers organise community groups to act as a conduit for long-term development activities,” he said.