The Tsunami In The Indian Ocean

Merlin the Magician

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Tsunami aid 'went to the richest'

Thousands in Aceh have not been able to move out of camps
Six months after the Asian tsunami, a leading international charity says the poorest victims have benefited the least from the massive relief effort.
A survey by Oxfam found that aid had tended to go to businesses and landowners, exacerbating the divide between rich and poor.

The poor were likely to spend much longer in refugee camps where it is harder to find work or rebuild lives.

Oxfam has called for aid to go to the poorest and most marginalised.

They must not be left out of reconstruction efforts, the charity said.

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean on 26 December killed at least 200,000 people in countries as far apart as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Somalia.

David Loyn, the BBC's developing world correspondent, says it is perhaps not surprising that the poorest suffered the most from the disaster itself.

Living in frail shelter, on marginal land, they were literally swept away by the waves, and the survivors among the poorest communities had less access to medical help than richer people did.
 
But the timeframe is three years, so there is still plenty of scope for things to improve. The poorest would also be living in the bamboo houses, rather than those built of stone (of which there seem to be few, anyway), and as I strongly suspect that there were far, far more poor people than rich ones, it's going to take much longer to process them. There's still another 2.5 years to go, so let's hope the money gets around eventually. Of course, if it's not in the hands of the fundraisers, where it should be, it might all be millions pissed to windward.
 
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