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YANGON: A month after Myanmar’s cyclone left
133,000 people dead or missing, the UN’s food agency chief warned
Monday that “urgent work” is needed to help hundreds of
thousands of survivors stave off hunger.
The United Nations estimates that
around 2.4 million people are in need of food, shelter, clean water
or other humanitarian aid, with 60 percent yet to receive any help
at all.
Myanmar’s isolationist military
regime, deeply suspicious of the outside world, has limited
international help and restricted access for humanitarian workers to
the hardest-hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, where whole villages
were washed away in the storm.
Josette Sheeran, the World Food
Program chief who visited Myanmar at the weekend, said progress had
been made in receiving visas for international aid workers, whose
expertise is needed to oversee the complex relief operation.
But she said aid workers still
faced bureaucratic hurdles in traveling to the delta, which suffered
the brunt of Cyclone Nargis on May 2 to 3.
“What we need is a seamless
global lifeline of relief supplies,” Sheeran said Monday, after
her visit.
“Progress has been made, but
urgent work remains on the critical last leg.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon
wrapped up a visit here more than a week ago, saying that he had
convinced junta leader Than Shwe to allow a full-scale foreign
relief effort.
But aid agencies say access to
the delta remains spotty, although more visas have been granted.
Myanmar flatly refused to accept
help from US, British and French naval ships, which were laden with
thousands of tons of supplies and helicopters to deliver them.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates
has accused the regime of “criminal neglect” for refusing their
help, saying Myanmar’s initial delays could have cost tens of
thousands of lives.
“Unless the regime changes its
approach, its policy, more people will die,” he said after a
weekend regional security forum in Singapore.
Malaysia’s Deputy Prime
Minister Najib Razak urged the regime to allow military helicopters
from neighboring countries to deliver supplies, insisting such help
would be purely humanitarian.
--AFP
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