How we can help the Asian coastal villagers
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In the face of the killer tsunamis, its easy to feel powerless. But we all have an opportunity now to collaborate in saving lives. Here is how beginning with the story of one man who has already saved a village by his quick action.
Since the killer tsunamis hit on Sunday morning, questions are being asked about why there was no early warning system in operation across Asian oceans, like the one that exists in the Pacific. These are important questions. But it is worth knowing that there is at least a human-scale early warning system in one part of India and this system did work, and it did save lives this week. In Pondicherry, India, there is a NGO called the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) that trains volunteer knowledge workers to monitor wave heights along its coast. If the waves are suspiciously high, the knowledge workers know that storms are on their way - and they quickly use Internet voice-files to blare out a warning through loudspeakers planted along the beach to local fishermen not to venture out to sea next morning. If you are a regular OneWorld reader, you have probably heard about the work of these knowledge workers (like the now-famous Pakkialouchme), who save lives in fishing villages by this means. This time, however, a knowledge worker went one step further as Subbiah Arunachalam from Chennai [Madras] explains: Mr Vijayakumar of Nallavadu (a coastal village in Pondicherry), did a wonderful thing. He received some training with the help of MSSRF (as a village knowledge centre volunteer) and now lives and works in Singapore. As soon as the tsunami reached Singapore and he came to know that it was moving towards India, he called people at Nallavadu by telephone and alerted them. People living in huts close to the shore moved out immediately. Not a single life was lost in this village. Our heartfelt and grateful thanks to Mr Vijaykumar. Other villages were not so lucky. In Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and even Somalia, more than 5000 miles from the epicentre the earthquakes aftershocks triggered tsunamis that were 10 metres high. Imagine a wall of water, higher than a two story house, travelling towards you at hundreds of miles per hour. It is a terrifying, and almost inconceivable, thought. Harshana Somapriya, an eye-witness from Moratuwa, a town on the edge of Colombo, Sri Lankas capital city, tried to convey the power of the tsunami by describing the damage it caused: A train with 1,500 passengers was washed away, all passengers missing, buses are seen floating in deep sea with no clue of the passengers on board, some villages, hotels and markets have washed away leaving no trace. Sri Lanka was hit the hardest. Up to a fifth of the islands people were made homeless by the blow struck by the tsunami on Christmas night. By the morning of Tuesday 28 December, as more and more bodies floated in from the ocean, the death toll had risen to 20,000. The total throughout the region is now thought to be double that. In face of such devastation, it is easy to despair. But worse will follow if all of
How we can help through NGOs? Most of us may not be able to give help as directly as the quick-witted knowledge worker from Singapore. But we can help through intermediaries - and at OneWorld we will do our bit by keeping you informed about reputable indigenous NGO partners working to provide emergency disaster relief. For example:
And/or UK citizens can support international agencies based in the UK including:
As most of the major development NGOs are OneWorld partners, we will be monitoring their sites regularly and publishing their updates on our news pages. But it is not only NGOs that need to help. what are the governments doing? The Australian government has already committed four million pounds. In the UK, Chancellor Gordon Brown spoke of a tragedy of Biblical proportions (BBC, 28 December) - but what exactly is the UK government doing to help? How we can help through state support? Thus far, the UK government has reportedly given £400,000 in aid through the EU to the first Red Cross appeal to help survivors, and will be providing about £50,000 to the World Health Organisation to prevent outbreaks of disease. When one considers the scale of the devastation, this must surely be no more than the tiniest of beginnings of our national response. International Development Secretary Hilary Benn, interviewed on Monday 27 December, would not commit to numbers, saying that the government has not yet completed its assessment of the aid that was needed. So a second action that citizens in the UK could take is to ensure that our governments assessment is made quickly and that action of a sufficient scale follows without delay.
And resources are needed, too, to set up an early warning system for the oceans of the global south. The poorer you are, the more you are in need of fast and accurate information - because you have no margin for error. Coastal communities in the global south, who are already among the most vulnerable in the world because they are among the most impoverished and marginalised communities in the world, must not abandoned, information-less, to become poorer, more marginalised and more vulnerable still. --------------- Anuradha Vittachi is Director of OneWorld UK Links: Regional coverage of the disaster from OneWorld South Asia |
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