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Tsunami Response Programme
On the fateful morning of 26 th December 2004 people living on the coastline of some 10 countries of South and Southeast Asia and East Africa were hit by a tsunami triggered off by one of the most severe undersea earthquakes ever recorded. Among the worst affected people were those living on the coastline in Indonesia's Aceh Province, Sri Lanka, South India – in particular the islands of Andaman and Nicobar, and States of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Pondichery, the tourist destinations in Southern Thailand, the island state of Maldives and Somalia. The global death toll is now estimated to be more than 250,000 persons. Also, thousands are injured, 7 million people were rendered homeless and some 5 million people in urgent need of food aid and medical assistance.
In India , the tsunami has in its aftermath left unbelievable death and destruction in Tamil Nadu, islands of Andaman and Nicobar, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. According to media reports nearly 15,000 people have died, and some 300,000 persons rendered homeless. Most of deaths are from Nagapattinam and Kanyakumari districts in Tamil Nadu and Car Nicobar island. The fisherfolks living on the Southeast Indian coastline spanning some 1,200 km are the worst affected. Among the dead more than a third are women and children.
Towards a Coordinated Effort
Within hours of the disaster thousands of volunteers from neighbouring villages, civil society organisations (CSO), NGOs and iNGOs, women's collectives, doctors, university students and government agencies moved into the affected areas for rescue and relief provisioning. Thousands of others involved themselves in the cleaning up operations and to help maintain sanitation and public health in affected villages and relief camps for homeless people.
Within days of the disaster, in Tamil Nadu alone, there were some 0.30 million people living in relief camps organised by government or civil society initiative in vacant school buildings, kalyan mandapams (marriage halls), tent villages, public buildings and even in open grounds. During the first few days the relief efforts were un-coordinated, erratic and generally chaotic. Civil society organisations, political parties, philanthropic individuals, chambers of commerce, religious groups and government agencies competed with each other in relief provisioning.
Notwithstanding the massive relief effort, many particularly those in remote locations and the weak among the survivors – women, children and aged - who could not jostle with others to take relief materials often flung from trucks and in some places air dropped were left out of the relief efforts. Also in most places people received inappropriate relief support – such as old clothes, cooked food – which they did not need.
Consequently, many expressed an urgent need for coordinated action. As the first step, a meeting of iNGOs working for relief provisioning was held on 28-29 December 2004 in Chennai. Representatives from 7 iNGOs participated. They all agreed to work out a coordinated response to the catastrophe. Later, civil society organisations and movements joined them. This coming together and experience sharing helped them move towards a coordinated response. Similar coordination has started at the district level between government and civil society groups.
Our tsunami response program is at 5 levels :–
Ten Months' Report (January- October 2005)
Within this relatively short period of ten months, signs of recovery are already beginning to show. Recovery is well underway in all the areas of our work in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and Union Territories of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Pondicherry . The manner, in which governments of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have softened their neo-liberal stands and are now inclined to consider pro-poor policies, is a positive sign for our rehabilitation efforts
By the end of October 2005, we have been able to reach out to 65,433 families from 461 villages through our 29 local partner NGOs and 7 CBOs (community based organisations). Our work includes the work with 465 persons with disability (PWDs) and more than 3700 women as an independent economic entity, under our livelihood rebuilding programme. To ensure dignified relief and rehabilitation measures cash-for-work programme was used as the key strategy and a total of 527,200 person-days of wage employment was generated through this programme. This programme was used to rebuild houses, private productive assets such as agricultural land and common productive assets such as ponds, common grazing lands and so on. 10 months report
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