Cries of chaos, indiscipline and insufficiency in relief operations
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Enayet Rasul
CYCLONE Sidr was not one of the fiercest storms to hit the Bangladesh coastline. It was the most powerful recorded storm that battered the Bangladesh coast. It carried a punch worse than the famous Katrina storm that devastated the US coastline last year. The Sunderbans absorbed much of the punch ; otherwise, the devastations could be colossal in nature. Nonetheless, Sidr laid to waste nearly one-third of the country including very significantly the economy of the affected areas. Thus, the damages wrought by the storm were very great indeed and full recovery from it has created a very formidable challenge for the Bangladesh economy when it had suffered a great deal from two rounds of serious countrywide flooding only months ago.
Recovery from Sidr is not only about providing urgent relief to people. The entire economic system from agricultural production and fisheries to industries, have been destroyed by the cyclone in most cases. People there have to rebuild from scratch to be able to start a means of livelihood again. For a while the contribution of some 40 million people of the country out of its over 150 million people, will not be added or counted in the gross domestic product (GDP). They are likely to be dependent on doles from the rest of the nation and international charity. Therefore, it is so very important to plan very well to help them back to their feet to resume production activities to graduate from their current stage of pathetic dependency to one of full productive participation in the economy. The strategy to be pursued in this must essentially be two fold : first, the people who have lost all means of earning a livelihood must be enabled to do so.
The task has to be accomplished at record speed to learn how many people or families and in what ways they have been affected and what they would need for resuming their normal economic life. After obtaining this data at the swiftest, they should be helped out equally as fast with cash grants to buy agricultural implements and inputs, fishing nets and boats and other assets they have lost. The sooner this is done, the entire economy will be coming out of a huge burden of supporting these very large number of dependent people. And ascertaining the number who would require such help will have to be as much a foolproof exercise as possible so that monies and assistance for their rehabilitation in the physical and economic sense can be efficiently and satisfactorily achieved.
As it is, nearly two weeks have passed since Sidr and the relief giving operations are yet to acquire a systemization and momentum covering all or nearly all the affected people and supplying them proportionately according to their needs. Cries of chaos, indiscipline, insufficiency and neglect in the emergency relief operations remain undiminished and this is worrying. If in the first hours after the crisis systematic emergency relief operations were not possible, the same problems should have been sorted out immediately afterwards. That allegations of inefficiency and gross deficiencies in the relief operations are still being heard some 12 days after the calamity, is a matter of concern.
According to credible media reports, chaos remains a feature of the relief operations. It was not insensible to drop bags of foods and essentials in difficult to reach areas through helicopters. But the air dropped foods in most cases were not equitably shared. The stronger ones scrambled and got hold of them. Attempts by the weaker to demand a share led to savage fights, injuries and denial. In other cases, relief operators from different sources were noted to be passing repeatedly through the same areas near roads and embankments supplying the same people. Thus, they were oversupplied whereas other similarly affected or worse off people in the interior remained completely unserved by these relief activities.
Thus, the greatest need is 'systemization'. The relief giving efforts must be systemized and immediately. In this age of computers, it is nothing difficult to draw up quickly the names of the affected people or the names of the heads of families in the affected areas. With this done, each person or family head can be served with an identity card and he or she can be instructed to receive essentials like rice, wheat, cooking oil, salt, flour, etc., from a designated place on weekly or fortnightly basis. The card recipients should be disciplined into waiting peacefully into these receiving centres and they should be fully supplied the pledged rations every time under the supervision of the armed forces. Eventually, the same cards can be utilized to distribute cash grants for house building, buying of agricultural implements and inputs, fishing nets and boats, etc. Special agricultural loans will have to be considered for them and interests on all previous such loans should be waived . Even the payment of principal amounts against previous loans should be postponed indefinitely. The new loans should be also free from interest and terms of conditions for their payment must be made exceptionally flexible.
The present uncoordinated manner of distributing the relief should come to an end. Private relief givers should be very welcome. But they should be persuaded to go by the official cards of the affected and they can deliver their charities from the same places from where the card holders would receive their supplies. This coordination will prevent the present duplication of efforts, the denial of relief to some and oversupplying others.
The armed forces should be directly in charge of both drawing up these cards and distribution against them with only a supportive role in this by the local civil administration. This is important to stop corruption in both the issuing of the cards and the actual distribution of the relief. The greatest benefit of it will be deserving persons getting supplied with regularity. The present chaos and grievances now noted in relief distribution, will come to an end. The other major aim should be achieving coordination in distribution from different sources.
The relief and rehabilitation efforts need to be streamlined on the above basis without wasting a moment so that lives can be saved, people can be spared from extreme distresses and the local economies can be regenerated quickly.
CYCLONE Sidr was not one of the fiercest storms to hit the Bangladesh coastline. It was the most powerful recorded storm that battered the Bangladesh coast. It carried a punch worse than the famous Katrina storm that devastated the US coastline last year. The Sunderbans absorbed much of the punch ; otherwise, the devastations could be colossal in nature. Nonetheless, Sidr laid to waste nearly one-third of the country including very significantly the economy of the affected areas. Thus, the damages wrought by the storm were very great indeed and full recovery from it has created a very formidable challenge for the Bangladesh economy when it had suffered a great deal from two rounds of serious countrywide flooding only months ago.
Recovery from Sidr is not only about providing urgent relief to people. The entire economic system from agricultural production and fisheries to industries, have been destroyed by the cyclone in most cases. People there have to rebuild from scratch to be able to start a means of livelihood again. For a while the contribution of some 40 million people of the country out of its over 150 million people, will not be added or counted in the gross domestic product (GDP). They are likely to be dependent on doles from the rest of the nation and international charity. Therefore, it is so very important to plan very well to help them back to their feet to resume production activities to graduate from their current stage of pathetic dependency to one of full productive participation in the economy. The strategy to be pursued in this must essentially be two fold : first, the people who have lost all means of earning a livelihood must be enabled to do so.
The task has to be accomplished at record speed to learn how many people or families and in what ways they have been affected and what they would need for resuming their normal economic life. After obtaining this data at the swiftest, they should be helped out equally as fast with cash grants to buy agricultural implements and inputs, fishing nets and boats and other assets they have lost. The sooner this is done, the entire economy will be coming out of a huge burden of supporting these very large number of dependent people. And ascertaining the number who would require such help will have to be as much a foolproof exercise as possible so that monies and assistance for their rehabilitation in the physical and economic sense can be efficiently and satisfactorily achieved.
As it is, nearly two weeks have passed since Sidr and the relief giving operations are yet to acquire a systemization and momentum covering all or nearly all the affected people and supplying them proportionately according to their needs. Cries of chaos, indiscipline, insufficiency and neglect in the emergency relief operations remain undiminished and this is worrying. If in the first hours after the crisis systematic emergency relief operations were not possible, the same problems should have been sorted out immediately afterwards. That allegations of inefficiency and gross deficiencies in the relief operations are still being heard some 12 days after the calamity, is a matter of concern.
According to credible media reports, chaos remains a feature of the relief operations. It was not insensible to drop bags of foods and essentials in difficult to reach areas through helicopters. But the air dropped foods in most cases were not equitably shared. The stronger ones scrambled and got hold of them. Attempts by the weaker to demand a share led to savage fights, injuries and denial. In other cases, relief operators from different sources were noted to be passing repeatedly through the same areas near roads and embankments supplying the same people. Thus, they were oversupplied whereas other similarly affected or worse off people in the interior remained completely unserved by these relief activities.
Thus, the greatest need is 'systemization'. The relief giving efforts must be systemized and immediately. In this age of computers, it is nothing difficult to draw up quickly the names of the affected people or the names of the heads of families in the affected areas. With this done, each person or family head can be served with an identity card and he or she can be instructed to receive essentials like rice, wheat, cooking oil, salt, flour, etc., from a designated place on weekly or fortnightly basis. The card recipients should be disciplined into waiting peacefully into these receiving centres and they should be fully supplied the pledged rations every time under the supervision of the armed forces. Eventually, the same cards can be utilized to distribute cash grants for house building, buying of agricultural implements and inputs, fishing nets and boats, etc. Special agricultural loans will have to be considered for them and interests on all previous such loans should be waived . Even the payment of principal amounts against previous loans should be postponed indefinitely. The new loans should be also free from interest and terms of conditions for their payment must be made exceptionally flexible.
The present uncoordinated manner of distributing the relief should come to an end. Private relief givers should be very welcome. But they should be persuaded to go by the official cards of the affected and they can deliver their charities from the same places from where the card holders would receive their supplies. This coordination will prevent the present duplication of efforts, the denial of relief to some and oversupplying others.
The armed forces should be directly in charge of both drawing up these cards and distribution against them with only a supportive role in this by the local civil administration. This is important to stop corruption in both the issuing of the cards and the actual distribution of the relief. The greatest benefit of it will be deserving persons getting supplied with regularity. The present chaos and grievances now noted in relief distribution, will come to an end. The other major aim should be achieving coordination in distribution from different sources.
The relief and rehabilitation efforts need to be streamlined on the above basis without wasting a moment so that lives can be saved, people can be spared from extreme distresses and the local economies can be regenerated quickly.