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A year on, Myanmar cyclone survivors struggle to rebuild
Thu Apr 30, 2009 7:43am EDT
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By Aung Hla Tun
BOGALAY, Myanmar (Reuters) - A year after Cyclone Nargis battered army-ruled Myanmar, killing nearly 140,000 people, paddy fields remain bare and tens of thousands of survivors live in makeshift shelters.
"Everybody lives on food handouts and most of us don't have decent shelter or a job," Ba Thin, 72, said, pointing to the bamboo, thatch and tarpaulin huts lining the road through his village near Bogalay, an area devastated by the May 2-3 storm.
Around Da Nyin Phyu village, where only 100 of its 800 residents survived, paddy fields have yet to fully recover from the 12-foot (4 meter) wall of water surged through the fertile Irrawaddy Delta.
Ba Thin blamed the salinated soil for ruining the main rice crop in the area, leaving farmers with crippling debts.
"Without help, almost all of us will not be able to grow anything in the coming crop season," he said.
With rice yields down nearly a third due to soil salinity and heavy rains affecting the harvest in early April, many farmers will have to sell what rice they have at low prices to try to pay off some of their debts.
"The biggest problem for the people down in these parts is they haven't been able to maintain an income flow," Chris Kaye, country director for the World Food Program (WFP), told Reuters during a recent visit to the delta.
With monsoon rains only weeks away, the main aid coordinating body has issued an urgent appeal for donor funds to help pay for shelter materials and other assistance.
Aid groups estimate at least 500,000 survivors, including 200,000 children, are still living in makeshift shelters cobbled together with bamboo poles and fraying tarpaulin, primarily due to a lack of money.
The pre-monsoon appeal is part of a three-year, $691 million recovery plan drafted by the Tripartite Core Group (TCG), comprising the United Nations, Myanmar and its Southeast Asian neighbors.
The plan faces serious fund-raising hurdles, including a global economic crisis that is squeezing foreign donor governments. Myanmar already receives far less aid than other poor countries due to its dismal human rights record.
DRINKING WATER SCARCE
Clean drinking water is scarce for most villages in the region, especially those close to the sea.
"We now have to depend on a local NGO or water sellers from the north for our daily drinking water," Tin Aye from Pathee Wai Chaung Village told Reuters.
Fishermen are also struggling, but they grumble more about local corruption than a lack of boats or nets. Continued...
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