Teamwork needed to maximize aid effort

Teamwork needed to maximize aid effort

Martin Abbugao, Agence France-Presse/Singapore

Close coordination, strict accountability and sustained focus are needed to maximize the benefits of billions of dollars in aid for Asia's tsunami victims, relief experts and government leaders said.

As donors prepare to meet in Geneva on Tuesday to round up more pledges, calls are mounting to make sure the nearly US$5 billion in promised aid so far will filter down to poor villagers and townsfolk who need it most.

And while the magnitude of the Dec. 26 devastation is overwhelming, aid agencies are vowing to avoid repeating past mistakes in which aid was entangled in messy bureaucracies and pledges remained unfulfilled.

"A critical challenge will be coordination between governments and donors, between governments and the UN and between aid agencies and non-government organizations," said James Ensor, public policy director of global humanitarian agency Oxfam.

"This will minimize duplication of efforts and ensure that aid will be distributed as efficiently as possible," he told AFP.

With the United Nations taking the lead in the relief efforts, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to appoint a "special representative" whose main responsibility is to coordinate the global response.

But more importantly, the representative should be able to keep the global spotlight and political will focused on the reconstruction despite the emergence of fresh headline-grabbing news in the future, Lee said.

Sadly, relief experts admit that corruption could get in the way of efficient aid delivery.

"The reputation of some of the tsunami-hit countries on corruption and bureaucratic red tape needs a lot of improvement," said an expert from a global relief agency.

The expert, who did not want to be named, said reconstruction efforts are often prone to corruption because of the large sums involved in rebuilding roads, bridges, ports and power stations.

As attention shifts from emergency aid to the reconstruction phase, more safeguards must be put in place, he said.

Oxfam and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) are calling for accountability in the disbursement of aid, as well as pressure on donors to live up to pledges.

"Our experience of past emergencies is that there are two major dangers in aid commitments," Oxfam said in a paper on the post-tsunami relief efforts.

"Either the emergency becomes a two-week wonder... or the emergency becomes the 'sweetheart crisis' for the year, and aid is diverted from other less visible crises," it said.

For example, only $17 million of the $32 million in pledges raised by Oxfam to help the victims of an earthquake in Bam, Iran in 2003 was delivered.

The $9 billion promised to help those affected by Hurricane Mitch in Latin America in 1999 eventually fell short of $2 billion in delivered aid, the report added.

In last month's tsunami disaster, many victims are poor fishermen who need to buy fishing boats and nets as they struggle to rebuild their lives.

They also include subsistence farmers and families whose market stalls were devoured by the giant waves, more than 155,000 people and leaving millions more homeless, most of them in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The survivors are often people with no access to insurance or credit.

Ilyas Agani, a 22-year-old fisherman from the badly-hit area of Lampulo near Banda Aceh in Indonesia, said a 30-meter fishing boat and nets would cost him up to Rp 400 million (US$43,000).

Banda Aceh shopowner, Susi, said she needs $1,000 to rebuild and refill her store which used to sell cosmetics, dresses and t- shirts.

"We don't have money. We hope we can get aid directly from the foreign governments, I don't think we can get anything from our government," Susi told an AFP reporter.

Alessandro Pio, ADB's country director in Sri Lanka, said by telephone from Colombo that "we need to have some mechanism to account for the funds and ensure that they are managed properly."

Oxfam's Ensor also said local communities must be "empowered" to determine their needs and be involved in the design, delivery and management of the assistance, while aid agencies need to come up with innovative schemes.

But the key danger is that after emotions calm down, promises will not materialize.

"You see this outpouring of compassion, but then the immediate crisis passes, the cameras go away, the money dries up and the aid doesn't reach its intended target. Many men, women and children suffer... and die," Ensor said.