UN says rebuilding plans under way in Asia

UN says rebuilding plans under way in Asia

Agence France-Presse, United Nations

The tsunami relief effort is starting to move beyond emergency work and plan rebuilding in many areas but remains slow in devastated Indonesian regions like Meulaboh, a United Nations official said on Monday (Tuesday in Jakarta).

Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, also said that the first signs of growing deaths among children after the catastrophe were now being seen.

"In many communities we have already come to the stage where we are discussing rebuilding their livelihoods," Egeland told a news briefing on the relief effort.

"In Indonesia, in Somalia, even in Sri Lanka -- certainly in Myanmar, in Thailand, in Malaysia -- that is now actually more and more the case," he said.

"But nowhere do we have the kind of problems that we're seeing in (the Indonesian regions of) Sumatra and Aceh," Egeland said.

Although pictures from Banda Aceh have shown the scope of the tragedy, he said the city of Meulaboh may "have perhaps been the most devastated of any town anywhere."

He said half or more of the town's 50,000 residents were dead, adding: "At this stage, it is beyond our comprehension."

Meanwhile on the west coast of the island of Sumatra, the death toll will continue to "grow exponentially," with perhaps tens of thousands more deaths, Egeland said.

"As we are getting in substantial relief finally to Aceh, we are concentrating now our main attention as an operation to the western coast of northern Sumatra," he said.

"We have not yet, I think, fully grasped that this was the epicenter of the catastrophe," he said. "Many of these villages are gone. There is no trace left of them."

He added: "My heart goes out to those along the Sumatra coast because we're not even there, and those were the hardest hit."

He also said he would not speculate beyond his earlier claim that the final death toll would rise above 150,000, but praised an international outpouring of support that has seen some US$2 billion in aid pledges.

"We saw 2004 ending with nature at its very worst. We saw 2005 starting with humanity at its very best. We hope that this will (become) the standard for international response," he said.

He also cautioned that signs were emerging of child mortality in affected areas.

"We have gotten the first indications of growing mortality among children but we have no exact figures for that. This is the race against the clock, really, to give enough water and sanitation to at least a couple of million people," he said.