Tsunami aid `failed to focus on poor'

NEW DELHI - The massive relief and rehabilitation efforts for the victims of last December's tsunami failed to focus on the poor and most vulnerable, international humanitarian agency Oxfam said in a report released yesterday.

The "Targeting Poor People" report was released to mark six months after the tsunami.

"A geographical coincidence meant that the tsunami affected some of the poorest people in each of the three worst-hit countries," the report said.

The tsunami, spurred by an earthquake off the island of Sumatra, crashed into several Indian Ocean countries on December 26, 2004, leaving more than 200,000 dead and half a million homeless. Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India were the hardest hit.

Oxfam's survey said the poor in all those countries were worst affected, as they lived in fragile houses and shacks with no upper storeys to which the could escape.

The divide between rich and poor was worst in Indonesia's Aceh province, where years of armed conflict had already impoverished the people. Those with resources simply moved away after the tsunami.

In India's coastal districts, the average person lived on less than $1 a day, the report said. The relief efforts had neglected to look into the problems of lower castes and people with livelihoods other than fishing, such as salt pan workers.

In Sri Lanka, up to one-third of the population in the areas affected by the tsunami lived below the poverty line, particularly in the conflict-ridden north and east.

Relief and rehabilitation efforts in the island nation had tended to focus on landowners, business people and high-profile cases, increasing the divide between the rich and poor.

The poor were more likely to spend more time in the relief camps as they found it harder with limited means and support structures to rebuild their lives, the survey said.

"Desperately poor people have been made poorer still by the tsunami. The aid effort must now increase its emphasis on targeting poor people, marginalized groups and women to ensure they are not excluded from reconstruction efforts," said Oxfam Director Barbara Stocking.

Hundreds of thousands of people left homeless in Indonesia by last December's tsunami will be moved to semi-permanent or permanent houses in two years, the United Nations said yesterday.

Bo Asplund, the U.N. resident coordinator in Indonesia, said the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR had returned to Indonesia's tsunami-hit areas to help rebuild houses for the 500,000 people left homeless in the country. "My best estimate here is that within two years the very large majority of people will be either in semi-permanent or permanent houses," Asplund told reporters.

	A boy jumping between boats along the shore in Nagappattinam, India, yesterday. A day before the six-month anniversary of the tsunami, officials estimate 17,000 new homes are needed in this district.