BURMA:International aid groups pressed Burma (also known as Myanmar) yesterday to stop closing cyclone relief camps as southeast Asian experts kicked off a mission to pin down the scale of the devastation a month after the storm.
Cyclone Nargis, the world's most deadly natural disaster since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, is officially thought to have left 134,000 people dead or missing and 2.4 million destitute.
But many survivors have not yet been reached and western nations and foreign aid groups complain the relief effort is being hampered by the inflexibility of Burma's military rulers.
"They've had a cyclone but they're not changing the rules. It's business as usual," said one official at an aid agency in Yangon, who asked not to be named.
Cumbersome regulations were blocking more vehicles and boats being used to distribute vital aid and even access to satellite communications was being made difficult, the official added.
Authorities have pushed ahead with a campaign, condemned by human rights groups and deemed "unacceptable" by the UN, of evictions of displaced people from government shelters.
"If populations are on the move all the time, it's very hard to reach them," said Chris Webster, a spokesman for the charity World Vision in Yangon. Closing the camps, usually clusters of tents around schools or other buildings, meant that growing numbers of displaced people were returning to areas where the situation was already bad, said the aid worker.
The last camp in Kawhmu, a district south of Yangon, was shut on Monday, witnesses said of the closures which appeared aimed at stopping the tented villages from becoming permanent.
International relief groups, the UN and government disaster officials met in Yangon, but little progress was reported on key issues affecting the delivery of aid.They had sought details on camp evictions and the governments repatriation policy, but got no answers, said a senior western aid worker who declined to be named.
Foreign aid workers would be allowed to stay for two days in the badly-hit delta area but it was not clear if they would be accompanied by official minders. "To be honest it's still not clear how it will work," the aid worker said.
The UN estimates that 1.3 million people had been given some assistance, although this was patchy and only half of those in the worst-hit delta had been reached.
"There remains a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance for the affected populations," the UN's humanitarian arm said in a report. In the last week about 15 international staff had been allowed to travel to the delta, but agencies still had no permanent presence, it said.
World Food Programme boss Josette Sheeran said its $70 million (€45 million) food aid programme faced a 64 per cent funding shortfall, as did its logistics plan which includes boats, trucks and helicopters.
A UN "flash appeal" also remains well short of its $201 million (€136 million) target a month after the disaster. - ( Reuters)