Information You Can Use: A Bi-monthly Service for the UN and Civil Society
Volume 2, Issue 1, January - February 2005
Aid Groups to Tsunami Survivors: Get to
Work
21 January 2005
Source: Reuters
Jeff Franks
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Not quite a month after they rushed in to
help victims of a killer tsunami, aid workers who used to hand out food with
a reassuring smile are now starting to give refugees a different message:
get to work.
Fearful that the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes and
livelihoods in the Dec. 26 disaster may get too used to handouts, many of
the more than 100 foreign non-governmental organizations here are encouraging
survivors to start earning their living again.
"During the emergency phase it's absolutely appropriate, in fact necessary,
to provide free distribution for all that need it," said Tony Banbury,
Asia director of the United Nation's World Food Program.
"But soon we will be transitioning from the emergency phase to the recovery
phase, where we will be focusing more on restoring livelihoods," he said.
Instead of just giving out food, aid groups are starting work programs in
which the refugees can earn the aid they get or earn cash to buy food to supplement
the rice and noodles most camps offer.
For the moment, the work allocated to refugees is mostly cleaning roads, clearing
debris and making sure that schools and other buildings left standing in the
devastated area are ready for use again.
According to aid experts, human nature being what it is, now is the time to
start getting the refugees on the job or they may lose their initiative to
go back to work.
"Three weeks down the line, I think now we are quite impressed with how
rapidly the recovery efforts of people are starting to take place," Margareta
Wahlstrom, the U.N.'s special tsunami envoy, told a news conference in Bangkok.
"We are now reaching very quickly the second phase of our relief operation,
which will focus on how to support people to regain their livelihoods -- how
to get them back to work, how to make sure the children go back to school,
how to prevent the outbreak of diseases," she said.
ANXIOUS TO LEAVE CAMPS
The shift in focus would lead to a gradual reduction in the military aid effort,
including army helicopters which have been the only way of reaching many isolated
tsunami-hit communities, especially in the Indonesian province of Aceh.
Instead, Wahlstrom said aid agencies would be relying more on repaired roads
or sea routes to deliver longer-term aid to help hundreds of thousands of
survivors get back on their feet.
The refugee work programs are aimed at helping the local economy recover and
to assist in the process of cleaning up after the tsunami spawned by a powerful
undersea earthquake west of Indonesia's Sumatra island, the aid groups said.
Refugees, although still in shock at the death and destruction brought by
the tsunami, have said repeatedly in recent interviews they are anxious to
leave the camps and get back to some semblance of their old lives.
They said they need cash and jobs and a place of their own to live.
"Taking aid money is okay for a while, but not for the long term,"
said Darmiah, 37.
Diane Johnson, director of Sumatra operations for Mercy Corps, said her group
has offered a work-for-money program for the past week and already has 1,000
people on the payroll at 35,000 rupiah ($4) a day, cleaning up roads and schools.
"People are eager to have something to do. They want to clean up their
villages, they want to get out of the camps. They need cash because, as you
can see, the (local) markets are functioning very well," she said.
Mercy Corps is starting to look for ways to help people restart businesses
by offering loans and other forms of help, she said.
One of their first big projects will be the reopening of a damaged brick factory,
which should be a success as Aceh rebuilds from the widespread tsunami destruction.
"People are going to need a lot of bricks," Johnson said.