Cyclone Pam: Villagers in frustrating wait for aid

Reporter·NZ Herald·

19 Mar, 2015 04:00 PM3 mins to read

A boy plays with a ball as his mother sifts through the ruins of their home on Port Vila. Photo / Getty Images

Wrangle with government keeping relief packages on hold as slow rebuild begins.

It was a tale of two villages. In one, rice, food and water provided by aid agencies, in another, nothing at all.

In Eton, on Efate island's western side, locals told how the sea swept in and the cyclone tore apart their houses.

"When the wind came the people held on to the roof and pulled on it while the wind was pulling too, so it wouldn't get blown away," said primary school teacher Albert Kalangis.

"But all of the houses on the sea front are destroyed because there were waves of 11m ... it is all just gone."

The village, about half an hour drive from Port Vila, is on the beach. Tourists visit to experience the white sand beaches and learn how the locals make their food.

Now all the village gardens are gone, and the people are desperate for fresh water and some certainty about their food supply. Villagers crowd into central buildings because their houses are gone.

"Our gardens are a 100 per cent loss," said Mr Kalangis, who was this week elected as Eton's chair of its disaster committee and is in charge of liaising with the Government.

"And 99 per cent of the community rely on the gardens and about 1 per cent on shops."

Mr Kalangis said they thought they could rely on their food for about three weeks. Aid would be needed for up to eight months while the gardens re-grew. However, housing was an immediate priority and the village simply did not have the capacity to rebuild houses. He thought the recovery would take up to a year.

He couldn't understand why, if food and shelter had been brought over from countries like New Zealand, it wasn't being distributed.

"It would have been better if we could receive aid much quicker."

Meanwhile, at an evacuation centre in the capital Port Vila, another community was helping unload rice, water and cooking oil after a Save The Children delivery to its evacuation centre that day.

Community leader Tom Alick, from the impoverished community of Seaside Tonga, a slum of 600 people, said there was no way they could survive without the supplies.

Mr Alick said he was finding it difficult to motivate residents to help with the rebuild.

"Lots of people here do not have jobs. But nobody is interested in helping. I called a meeting yesterday and had to go around five times before anyone would come."

In the capital, Save The Children have been supplying the evacuation centres since Saturday.

The centres are some of the few areas receiving aid, after a stoush between Government and aid agencies saw relief packages put on hold, with some yet to resume distribution despite supplies and volunteers at the ready.

Agencies were obviously frustrated yesterday, with many waiting for Government approval. Some already had trucks loaded only to have supplies delayed.

Save The Children's head of humanitarian aid for Australia, Nicola Krey, said co-ordination was needed to make sure aid got to the right places. "The strategy has changed, but that's all right because it does have to be targeted. It's all back on for us today."