[Straits Times] INDONESIAN tsunami survivors complained on Monday they are being forced to scavenge for wild roots because aid had not arrived a week after the wave crushed their remote villages.
| Doesn't it take about two weeks to a month in the U.S. after a catastrophe like Katrina? How much longer is reasonable to expect anywhere beyond the First World? |
Indonesian officials have admitted they are struggling to care for 65,000 people displaced by an erupting volcano on Java island and the tsunami which smashed into the Mentawai island chain off Sumatra last Monday.
But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono dismissed the criticism, telling relief officials to do their best and ignore complaints. 'I was informed ... that there had been criticism and comments. I say don't worry about all that,' he said at a weekly cabinet meeting.
'It always happens. There are people who give direct help, and there are also many who criticise and forget to help.' The latest official corpse count from the tsunami stood at 431 with another 88 missing, feared dead, and almost 15,000 made homeless.
Another 50,000 are in temporary shelters in central Java some 1,300 kilometres (810 miles) to the east, where the Mount Merapi volcano erupted again on Monday. An eruption last week killed 34 people.
Emergency response officials denied reports that tsunami aid is rotting and being looted. They blame delays in aid distribution on bad weather and the difficulty of reaching isolated communities by sea or air.
| Those two sets of concepts are not contradictory, you know. Delays and difficulties can lead to unnoticed deterioration and disappearance. |
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