Tsunami Survivers Continue to Face Challenges

That shouldn't come as a surprise given the problems we've seen with Katrina relief right here in our own country.

Two years after the devastating tsunami, life in Banda Aceh is far from normal.

All across the ravaged cityscape, scraped bare by the waves, thousands of tiny, toy-box houses have sprung up in recent months as a program of rebuilding gains momentum. But many of the new houses are empty because they lack water, sanitation and electricity and because there are no schools, clinics or commercial activity nearby.

Billions of dollars in aid were pledged. I recall making a contribution myself. Now I seriously wonder just how much of my $125 donation actually helped those in need as opposed to those handling the money bags.

But by some estimates only one-third of the promised aid has been distributed to affected countries, and much of that has been lost to corruption, mismanagement, political squabbles and bureaucratic dead ends.

Hundreds of thousands of people still have no permanent homes or jobs, and it seems that many will live out their lives as refugees of the tsunami.

In India, the British aid group Oxfam estimates that 70 percent of affected people still live in temporary shelters. In Sri Lanka the revival of a civil war has made life even more precarious for survivors.

I cannot even begin to fathom the logistics of an international relief effort of this magnitude. But am I wrong for expecting those who are involved, and their governments, to think this through to a logical conclusion? What a waste and a missed opportunity for creating new jobs and training for those people.

“We are constantly overwhelmed by the massive task confronting us,” said the director of the Indonesian government’s reconstruction agency, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, at a conference of donors in New York in November.

One of the poorest provinces in Indonesia, Aceh cannot easily absorb the $7.1 billion in international aid that has been pledged, Mr. Kuntoro said, and does not have the capacity to carry out the quantity of rebuilding that is needed. Some projects have been put off, he told reporters here, because the province has only nine asphalt plants and cannot meet the demand.