Tempers fray over aid relief delays

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30 Apr, 2015 05:00 PM4 mins to read

Some aid has reached remote villages near the quake's epicentre. Picture / AP

International workers restless as Govt accused of failing to give clear direction

Dozens of international health-care professionals and emergency medical aid workers crammed into a small co-ordination office in Kathmandu looking for direction on how to assist in relief efforts after last weekend's devastating earthquake.

"Nepal needs tents, as quickly as possible," Padam Bahadur Chand, a senior health official, told them.

As Chand made the appeal, however, the cargo site at the airport in the Nepali capital illustrated the bigger problem on the ground: a cripplingly slow response by the Administration.

Piles of tents that China sent have been lying at the airport since Monday, soldiers stationed there said.

The tents were unloaded from the plane only on Wednesday. Worse still, no one at the site knew when they would be sent to the far-flung villages where the quake displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

"There are not enough trucks to take them out of here," one cargo attendant said. "Things have been moving slowly here."

Nearly five days after the quake shook this Himalayan nation, killing at least 5027 people, international workers are getting restless. Many of them are stuck in Kathmandu, even as urgent help is required in remote villages yet to be reached.

Aid workers said many of their cargo planes are still awaiting permission to fly to Kathmandu's beleaguered airport. The planes that have landed are waiting for their cargo to be unloaded. In many instances, the aid teams are not promptly told where to go or whom to work with.

At the co-ordination meeting, nearly every question the international aid workers asked was met with a stock reply by Chand that went something like this: "The information will be shared with you soon."

A doctor with a German aid agency, who has been in Nepal for two days but has not been given any task, expressed frustration. "We need to be told where to go, what is needed, what to carry and if the road to that place is in good condition. We need specific information, and time is running out," said the doctor.

"Yesterday we were told by officials that there are sufficient doctors, but medicines are needed. But this morning, I read in the local newspapers that there is a shortage of doctors. It makes me think, 'Are we even needed here?"'

One health worker inquired about where to send the tents. Chand said, "Please send them to the local district-level medical teams. We will give you information about the teams soon."

Nepali rescue helicopters took advantage of breaks in the rain to bring out the injured from remote mountain villages where aid is only beginning to trickle in. A rescue mission yesterday landed in the village of Darkha, about 100km northwest of the capital, and unloaded boxes of aid supplies.

In the village of Gumda only five people were killed and 20 were injured among 1300 residents but most had lost their homes and desperately needed temporary shelter, along with the 40kg sacks of rice that were delivered.

Hundreds of displaced people in the town of Charikot, about 130km east of Kathmandu, protested at the local government office, breaking tables and chairs in anger because relief supplies had not reached them, according to media reports.

Frustration over the pace of the aid operation has been building in Kathmandu where tens of thousands of people are sleeping rough in 16 makeshift refugee camps.

Those frustrations boiled over into scuffles at the city's main bus station yesterday, where furious passengers were trying to leave the capital for their rural homes.

Ramesh Oli, a 30-year-old shopkeeper at Kathmandu's bus station, said there were similar outbreaks of violence throughout Wednesday.

Thousands of residents lined up for kilometres after an announcement that buses would be available for free to ferry them out of Kathmandu. "There are no jobs here in this city now. Everything has shut down.

"We just want to get out now and go back to our villages," said Hari Aryal, a 32-year-old restaurant cook.

About 170 buses packed with desperate people left the capital yesterday.

"There is a complete absence of accountability in the Government. The army is doing all the co-ordination, but they lack the political direction," said Yubaraj Ghimire, editor of the newspaper Annapurna Post.

"It shows the indifference among our politicians in this time of crisis and misery."