BANGLADESH: Relief to cyclone victims
Updated
Efforts are being stepped up to deliver aid to thousands of cyclone victims in southern Bangladesh, as the US military joined aid operations on Monday. But a new problem has emerged in the aftermath of Cyclone Sidr - as up to three million victims now face the risk of food shortages, with over 92-thousand hectares of crops destroyed and 350 thousand livestock lost.
Presenter: Girish Sawlani
Speakers: Country director for the World Food Programme in Bangladesh, Douglas Broderick
SAWLANI: Packing winds of 250 kilometres per hour, Cyclone Sidr left a devastating trail of destruction leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and in desperate need of supplies.
But relief operations are gathering pace with the United States contributing a fleet of helicopters in an effort to reach the victims in the remote areas in Southern Bangladesh.
But those who made it out alive in the worst hit areas continue to struggle for survival . Heather Blackwell is the head of aid agency Oxfam in Bangladesh.
BLACKWELL: I made a field visit to one of the most affected areas in Bagherhat district over the last four days and we have a large number of people who are living in very makeshift shelters basically made out of bed sheets and living along the roadside who have lost everything, it's not just their shelter but all of their belongings and few people had cooking pots or even buckets to store clean water. So the situation for a large number of people is that they have lost nearly everything that they had owned.
SAWLANI: She says that relief operations continue to be hampered by the inability of aid workers to gain access to the more remote areas.
BLACKWELL: Access is still an issue, though the roads are now clear people are spread over a very large area and those most directly impacted maybe something between two to three million people. And they're spread across villages and communities, some of them in the cyclone shelters. So the logistics that's required to get out where people are is a huge logistical problem.
SAWLANI: For the time being Heather Blackwell says that aid agencies and government authorities can only focus on providing the most basic of needs to the millions affected.
BLACKWELL: It's really accessing basic requirements, I mean fresh water. People generally use ponds for water and a lot of those ponds have been contaminated with trees and with rubbish, with livestock that may have died.
SAWLANI: The destruction caused by Cyclone Sidr also poses serious danger to the country's total food supply.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation says the cyclone wiped out over 92000 hectares of crops and more than 350,000 cattle and poultry.
It is now feared that up to three million Bangladeshis risk being short of food within the next six months. Country director for the World Food Programme in Bangladesh, Douglas Broderick says the government faces an uphill task of ensuring that the country has sufficient food supply.
BRODERICK: We're obviously very concerned about it, a very poor country like Bangladesh has been hit extremely drastically and alarmingly with the rise in commodity prices and shipping prices. So indeed it's costing the government more and more to import rice. So the food situation in Bangladesh is becoming extremely challenging. The government did ask some donors today for roughly about 500-thousand metric tons of assistance going down the road, because obviously there's concern in the next three, four months that there could be possibilities of them having core difficulties and challenges getting all the foods that they require.
SAWLANI: He says the cyclone has also inflicted serious damage to Bangladesh's fisheries sector - one of its most crucial industries.
BRODERICK: The damage is quite extensive. What I saw from the air I saw many, many, many damaged ships and all on the wayside along with nets that were torn and need replacing. So I would anticipate that the damage to the fisheries would be pretty extensive and fishermen would need loans and credit to get new fishing boats and getting nets sorted. I imagine it would be pretty expensive once our FAO fishery expert completes that sort of assessment.
SAWLANI: Despite the threat of food shortages, the World Food Programme's Douglas Broderick insists that none of the cyclone victims will experience starvation.
BRODERICK: There's adequate food supplies trickling in and beginning to increase widely into the cyclone areas. There's survival rations and emergency rations so we don't have anybody in the cyclone area starving, that's not happening at all.
