Malaysia, S'pore offer airports for aid work
Malaysia, S'pore offer airports for aid work
Agence France-Presse, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia has opened its airspace and two airports to U.S. and UN
relief operations for the tsunami-hit Indonesian province of
Aceh, the foreign ministry said on Monday.
Singapore has also offered the use of its air and naval bases
to the United Nations to carry out relief operations in
Indonesia's tsunami-hit province of Aceh, a top minister said on
Monday.
"We've also been in touch with the UN relief coordinator, to
see how best we can offer our facilities here for (the United
Nations) to use," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean told reporters
at the Sembawang military airbase.
The UN World Food Programme would use an airport in Malaysia's
Subang, a suburb outside the capital Kuala Lumpur, as a base to
forward relief supplies to Aceh, the ministry said in a statement
carried by Bernama news agency.
The United States has been permitted to use the Langkawi
International Airport in the north to send humanitarian aid to
Aceh, which bore the brunt of the Dec. 26 disaster, it said.
Malaysia has also deployed aircraft and helicopters to help
Indonesia transport supplies and tsunami victims from Aceh, it
said.
Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said the government would
send a navy vessel to Aceh on Wednesday with a consignment of
additional humanitarian supplies and heavy machinery requested by
the Indonesians.
He said Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would officially
hand over the Malaysian government's contribution to Indonesia's
tsunami victims when he attends an emergency summit of world
leaders in Jakarta on Thursday.
Malaysia's confirmed death toll in the disaster climbed to 68
on Sunday after a two-year-old girl and a 57-year-old woman died
in hospital from injuries sustained when the tsunamis hit
northern Kedah state, police said.
The giant waves, spawned by a massive earthquake off Indonesia
on Dec. 26, hit shorelines across the Indian Ocean, killing more
than 144,000 people, about 94,000 of them in Indonesia.
Eight Malaysians were reported to still be missing by late on
Sunday, including four in Phuket in Thailand, three in Aceh and
one in Madras in India.
While Malaysia lies closer to the epicenter of the earthquake
than many countries harder hit, it was protected from the full
force of the waves by Indonesia's Sumatra island.
The National Union of Tamil School Teachers here has urged
schools, teacher training colleges and universities to introduce
lessons on natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, to
prepare Malaysians for such eventualities, Bernama said.
"Despite tsunamis being in the news for the past 40 years when
they hit Japanese islands, we don't have that vocabulary in our
school subjects," said adviser Shahul Hamid Mydin Shah.
"It's high time we include them and other natural disasters so
that we will be better prepared in the future."