Living Like Beggars, The Thai Families With Scant

[marquess]

There is an article in todays Times, which states that some people have been forcilbly removed and are living like beggars, having received no aid, primarily because the Thai gov has refused international aid. Perhaps George or one of the mods could do a link to it?

[marquess]

Here is the link!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18...1428920,00.html

[Richard W]

There is an article in todays Times, which states that some people have been forcilbly removed and are living like beggars, having received no aid, primarily because the Thai gov has refused international aid. Perhaps George or one of the mods could do a link to it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What's happening with the international NGOs? Does foreign help have to be privately funnelled to the Thai Red Cross?

My employer (a European company) has offered to match employees' contributions channelled through the British Red Cross, French Red Cross or Italian Red Cross. I'd like to make a case for matching donations made direct to the Thai Red Cross.

[udon]

Living like beggars, the Thai families with scant hope of receiving any aid

By Daniel McGrory

Government’s refusal to accept outside help condemns thousands to months in makeshift camps

AS PRESIDENTS and prime ministers fall over themselves to pledge billions in aid to victims of the tsunami, Van Intama sits cross-legged in the dirt of a refugee camp in southern Thailand with scant hope of ever seeing a penny.

Fanning her seven-month-old son with a scrap of cardboard against the heat, Mrs Intama’s immediate financial needs are modest and humbling. “If we had some plastic sheeting, and my husband had any sort of boat and a fishing net we could be back on our feet, and wouldn’t be a burden to anyone. But our Government won’t do it,” she said.

Police rounded up the Intama family and 3,000 of their neighbours who survived in the fishing port of Nam Kaem and forcibly moved them to a patch of wasteland five miles away where they were allocated a tent barely big enough to hold two children.

She looks astonished and embarrassed when told how much money people around the world have donated and how at that moment international leaders in Jakarta were talking about making $1 billion available immediately to the stricken areas.

“If there is all this money, and people have been so kind to us, then why are we living like beggars?” she asks.

The simple answer is that the Thai Government has politely declined international help, claiming that the country can cope on its own. Yet most observers agree that relief workers have been overwhelmed and foreign aid is essential.

There is no shortage of food, clothes or bottled water at this camp in Bang Bang Muang but the lives of Mrs Intama, her husband Achad and the others here would be enormously improved if the likes of the leading British charities with their proven expertise were permitted to help.

“We don’t care where the helping hand comes from,” Mrs Intama said. “This is no time to be proud. Give me a pot and I will cook for my family. Why do we have to queue at kitchens?” She watches with dismay as carpenters hammer together a flimsy line of corrugated roofed sheds which is to be the Intamas’ communal accommodation for what is likely to be many months to come.

Her only child, Mano, has a hacking cough and diarrhoea, as do many of the infants in the camp. Jongrak Insqwet, 37, the nurse treating him in a sweltering tent next to the open-air kitchen, says: “This is not a healthy place for so many families to live and must only get worse.” The nurse and her fellow volunteers from Bangkok hospitals run this field clinic in shifts, sleeping in a school and assisted by holidaymakers who opted to use the rest of their holiday working rather than heading for beaches.

The only foreign assistance is provided by a Bangkok-based Christian charity staffed mainly by Americans, a Taiwanese and a Japanese health team.

Charities from Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee hope that when Jack Straw visits here today he might persuade the authorities that it is no loss of face nor an indictment of their efficiency if they invite Oxfam and others in.

Ian Archer took matters into his own hands. The 43-year-old builder from Swanley, Kent, flew to Phuket and asked how he could help. “I was amazed the British agencies weren’t here,” he said. “I only learnt about this place from the fellow running the bar in my hotel. I sold a couple of properties and was going to buy a place in Spain for my wife and four children but I’ll use that money to keep me going here for as long as I can be useful.”

Sweat was running down his face as he pitched in, knocking together the plywood boxes which will replace the tents. The Thai authorities aim to keep their public pledge that nobody in Bang Bang Muang will still be in a plastic tent in a fortnight but what they didn’t add is that the alternative is not what these people want.

Amnavy Champrasit shares the wish of most that they could rebuild their homes right away. “Give us the tools, the wood and we will do it. The longer we stay here the more I fear we will never go home.”

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Unreal

[Erwin1011]

Personally I fee that the focus of the international press is too much on the tourists and not enough on the locals.

To some extend I understand why, but I get a bit upset with it.

My friend just came back from one of the outlaying villages and the stories he brought home are devastating.

but worse are the vultures that come around and offer survivors to buy off their title deeds. They come with print outs (where do they get that?), so called to find info on missing persons and consistantly end up with putting the offer on the table.

Disgusting