Tsunami Recovery Effort Under Fire As Anniversary Approaches

Nearly two years on from the tsunami disaster which struck much of South East Asia, including the Maldives, and relief organisations are coming in for heavy criticism for the slow progress they have made.

According to the UN Department for Aid and Development database, seen by the BBC’s Newsnight programme, about US$6.7bn was committed in total by governments and charities to the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand.

However, more than US$3.3bn has not been spent.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari has visited the tsunami areas for the UN, and described the news as “very disturbing”.

“It should really not take this long to build permanent housing. I do not accept the explanation that it is going to take four to five years, in some cases, seven. I’m an architect, I know how long it takes to build a house,” he told the BBC.

Former US President Bill Clinton is due to publish a report tomorrow on lessons learned from the tsunami recovery. “Only 30 to 35% of the people have been put back into permanent housing,” he said. “We have to do better than that.”

The international media has also launched a stinging attack on the charities’ work. Today’s Guardian newspaper in the U.K. writes: “Bureaucracy, poor planning and the cynical withholding of money by some governments and charities are believed to have caused the inordinate delays in the four countries most affected – Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Maldives.”

Here, the British Red Cross now has only until the end of next year to spend its remaining funds, a deadline set by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation of UK charities. “That wasn’t a realistic time frame,” says Jill Clements, head of the Maldives mission. It now appears highly unlikely that the charity will have completed its work by that time, meaning it will have to decide on a new strategy from 2008.

The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) insist they have made progress and spent a higher proportion of money donated than anywhere else.

Joe Lowry, and IFRC spokesman, insists the overall picture is not as bad as this latest news suggests. “The Maldives has shown the best progress,” he says. “We said that it would take us probably five years to complete our programmes, we are two years in and we have already spent 40% of our money, more in Maldives.”

“The headlines are disappointing for us because it shows that the message of what we are trying to achieve has not been understood,” he said, speaking to Minivan News.

He added that the slow pace of recovery is the result of careful planning. “We have a situation where we want to be actually positive that people have ownership of land before building,” he says, saying that questions such as planning permission and various government regulations have to be resolved before building can start.

He also claims the IFRC has tried hard to “build back better” and provide full infrastructure to compliment the housing. “We would be neglecting our responsibilities if we just built housing estates without all the myriad things that go into building a community,” he said.

The IFRC’s achievements to date include helping the Red Cross Red Crescent to build 106 permanent homes, with 553 under construction, out of a planned total of 1,550. They have also helped with the construction of four out of 15 supplementary water supply systems.

The IFRC has been involved in the foundation of the Maldives Red Crescent, which is still not up and running after more than a year of arguments and wrangling between officials.

Another high-profile failure has been redevelopment on the island of Kolhufushi, Meemu Atoll, by the British Red Cross. Former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and President Gayoom have visited the island, which was one of the worst hit. Redevelopment work there is now on hold, half finished, and islanders are furious.

The British Red Cross abandoned the project in May after continued in-fighting between the two villages on the island. The charity has told the government to sort out the problems before it will return. So far only 8 out of 1 200 residents are currently living in their own homes. The rest are in temporary shelters.

Jill Clements, head of the British Red Cross mission, has described the fiasco as: “very sad and very frustrating.”

The disagreement focused on a plan to move the entire settlement to the centre of the island, rather than rebuilding houses on the coast. The Red Cross was only there to work only on rebuilding destroyed houses, rather than building on new sites, and was waiting for authorities’ approval before moving ahead.

But majority support for the plans was frustrated by the objections of just five families who wanted to stay where they were. The conflict eventually escalated to a level where the Red Cross had to hire security guards to protect contractors.

The situation is still no less turbulent, and islanders have been protesting this week as Planning Ministry officials attempt to survey the island. They are now working under police protection from 20 officers. Islanders are furious as the half-finished work has destroyed the only agricultural marshland they had, and has seen 400 coconut trees, an important source of food, cut down.

The Red Cross around the world has been given more than $2.2bn. According to their own figures, most of that – $1.3bn – is still in the bank. It promised to build 50,000 permanent houses in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. So far only 8,000 have been completed.

In the Maldives, the Disaster Emergencies Committee says 216 houses had been completed by December. It also says charities have constructed three new schools and built warehouse facilities on 6 islands.

Approximately a third of the Maldives’ population of 300,000 were severely affected by the tsunami, which left 82 people dead. Twenty-six remain unaccounted for and are presumed deceased and 21,663 were displaced.