|
BANGKOK: Aid groups blocked from entering Myanmar to
mount a full-scale disaster response said Wednesday they were using
new tactics to help survivors, as hope faded that the ruling junta
would open its doors.
Without being able to send in the
heavy-lift helicopters and military hardware they need, they have
hired boats to navigate swollen rivers and trucked in supplies from
as far away as the Thai border.
Some groups are also mulling
crash-training courses in Thailand for Myanmar nationals, amid a
growing feeling that foreign relief experts still awaiting visas
almost two weeks after the disaster may never get them.
“I wouldn’t call it
resignation, but there’s a recognition of the constraints that
we’re likely to continue to face,” Save the Children Spokesman
Dan Collinson said after a meeting of UN agencies in Bangkok.
“Only a fraction of what should be done is being done.”
Myanmar’s military regime has
been condemned for refusing to allow foreign experts in to guide the
complicated relief effort needed to reach up to two million
increasingly desperate victims of the May 2 to 3 tempest.
But the generals have refused to
budge, saying they can manage on their own, and while welcoming
gifts of foreign aid they will distribute it themselves into the
swampy and remote disaster zone in the country’s southwest.
Some aid groups, which were
already operating inside Myanmar under tight controls, have managed
to deliver some supplies, but complain that logistics are daunting
and that they face increasing constraints from the regime.
The dangers of using tactics that
are out of the ordinary were underlined this week when the first Red
Cross boat carrying emergency goods by river sank after hitting a
submerged tree trunk, losing much of its cargo but no lives.
--AFP
|
