Myanmar prime minister says aid provided to cyclone survivors will improve their lives

YANGON, Myanmar: Myanmar's prime minister said government assistance for survivors of last month's Cyclone Nargis will make their lives better than ever, a state-run newspaper reported Sunday.

The New Light of Myanmar cited Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein saying the government was prepared to help people settle either in their native areas, or in the places where they took refuge in relief camps after the May 2-3 storm.

Myanmar's ruling military junta has been criticized abroad for allegedly evicting cyclone survivors from refugee camps, supposedly without adequate provisions to survive elsewhere. The government has been sensitive to such criticism, describing it as lies meant to undermine the country's stability.

Thein Sein was making an inspection trip to the devastated Irrawaddy delta area Saturday when said the government would provide temporary shelters at first, to be followed by permanent housing, the newspaper reported.

Those returning to the their home areas would be supplied with rations for one week, with the nearest relief camps assigned to providing food in the longer run, he was quoted saying.

The government would also supply power tillers and seed rice for farmers, as well as fishing equipment fishermen, the newspaper reported him saying.

"The government, on its part, will provide assistance for the storm victims for more improvement of their living standards than ever before," Thein Sein said in the report. "Despite the supply of basic needs of the people including transport, untrue news stories regarding the government's measures are being broadcasted by some unscrupulous persons and organizations with negative views."

The U.N. estimated that a total of 2.4 million people were affected by Cyclone Nargis. It warned that more than 1 million of them, mostly in the hard-to-reach Irrawaddy Delta, still need help.

The government insists it acted quickly and efficiently to provide relief. But U.N. officials and aid groups have criticized the regime for restricting foreigners' access to the delta, saying it has prevented enough food, water and shelter from reaching desperate survivors.

On Saturday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned there was an "urgent need" for tarpaulins to provide the estimated 1.5 million homeless survivors with temporary shelter. Otherwise, they warned, the threats of hunger and disease could intensify.

"Exposure to the elements five weeks after a disaster of this magnitude has to be a major concern," said John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman. "People are in a weakened condition. They are sick; they are hungry. Without shelter, their whole situation is seriously exacerbated."

The bodies of tens of thousands of people killed in Myanmar's cyclone will probably never be identified because they were washed far from their homes and have decomposed so badly, an aid agency said Sunday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said burying the estimated 78,000 killed when the storm hit has become a lower priority than trying to assist the survivors.

As a result, bloated bodies are still scattered around the Irrawaddy delta more than five weeks after the storm hit. Some have been dumped in canals and unmarked mass graves or cremated, while others remain untouched.

"Identifying bodies at this stage will be incredibly difficult," said Craig Strathern, a Red Cross spokesman in Myanmar.

"Many now are in advanced stages of decay and the information we have been able to gather is that many of the bodies that were affected by the tidal surges were stripped of clothing and any identifying items," he said. "We have reports that some bodies ended up four miles (seven kilometers) from their place of origin."

Survivors in the delta said they initially attempted to identify bodies but were overwhelmed by the numbers of corpses clogging the rivers and washing up on the beaches.

"Initially, the bodies were identified by relatives and we cremated them after holding religious rites," said Myint Thuang, a survivor from the delta town of Bogalay, referring to Buddhist traditions.

"However, after more bodies washed up on the shore and with no one to identify them, we buried them in mass graves," he said, describing how they sprinkled lime powder on the graves of 10 or more bodies and marked some with a wooden stick.

Strathern said the Red Cross last week began distributing kits — with body bags and forms to list where a body is buried and any details identifying it — for volunteers wanting to dispose of the dead.

But he said he doubted there would be any large-scale effort to identify victims, mostly because there was no motivation. Myanmar law allows families to declare missing persons dead after only three weeks, clearing the way for relatives to claim death benefits and land ownership and other inheritance issues.

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