UN 'well-funded' for new quake disaster aid
UN 'well-funded' for new quake disaster aid
Reuters, Geneva
UN relief agencies said on Tuesday their aid effort in Indonesia following December's tsunami disaster was well-funded and they were unlikely to need more cash after the latest quake in the region.
Indonesian officials say about 1,000 died -- mainly on a small island off the island of Sumatra -- when the tremor shook the area overnight, although the country's vice president said the toll could rise to 2,000.
Representatives of three Geneva-based agencies -- and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies -- said staff were already moving to the newly affected areas and food and medical supplies were on the way.
"There should be no problem with funds. We received enough support for the tsunami appeal," said Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme (WFP), referring to the massive world response to the Dec. 26 catastrophe.
That disaster left nearly 300,000 left dead or missing around the Indian Ocean after a stronger quake that send huge waves crashing into coastal areas as far away as Africa.
Elizabeth Byrs of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it did not appear that any new requests for international funding would be needed.
"We will have to see what the dimensions of the latest earthquake are but I don't think that for the moment we will be needing more," she told Reuters.
After the December disaster, OCHA issued an appeal for $873 million to support relief operations by all UN agencies and other international aid bodies and 84 percent of that has already come in, Byrs said.
A mid-term review of the relief operation and an assessment of what was still needed to be done was due to be held -- probably at UN headquarters in New York -- on April 6 with UN disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland presiding.
OCHA, the WFP, UNICEF, the agency specialized in helping children, and the non-UN International Organization for Migration all said they were sure they could cope with the new disaster with what they had in place in Indonesia already.
"It is not like after the tsunami when we had to get everything there," said Damien Perzonnaz of UNICEF.
WFP's Berthiaume said the agency was already moving injured people on the island of Nias, which suffered the worst from the new quake and whose local hospital was badly damaged, by helicopter to Sibolga on Sumatra.
The WFP was setting up a base in Sibolga to operate helicopters and light aircraft from Wednesday to Nias and the neighboring island of Simelue, which was also hit, to deliver relief and move victims to hospital.
"We have food, shelter materials, medical supplies, tents and blankets all available," she told Reuters.