Tuesday, May 20, 2008
No World Bank aid for Myanmar for now
SINGAPORE - The World Bank is currently not in a position to give aid to Myanmar, its managing director said Tuesday, saying the cyclone-hit country has been in arrears since 1998.
"At this time we are not in a position of providing resources to Myanmar," Juan Jose Daboub told reporters.
Singapore medical teams expected to leave for Myanmar this week
By S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia Posted: 20 May 2008 2025 hrs
SINGAPORE: Official medical teams from Singapore are expected to leave for Myanmar this week. Singapore's Foreign Ministry said the ASEAN-led coordinating mechanism will work out the deployment of international relief workers to Myanmar, including those from Singapore.
SINGAPORE: Official medical teams from Singapore are expected to leave for Myanmar this week. Singapore's Foreign Ministry said the ASEAN-led coordinating mechanism will work out the deployment of international relief workers to Myanmar, including those from Singapore.
Pic: Myanmar cyclone survivors taking shelter while waiting for first aid treatment.
This followed Myanmar's agreement to let ASEAN coordinate international aid for the cyclone victims at a special meeting in Singapore on Monday. ASEAN foreign ministers were given a comprehensive update by the grouping's Emergency Rapid Assessment Team, which was in Myanmar from 9 to 18 May to see first-hand the destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis.
The team reported that the overarching concern for the international community is access to affected areas. It also fears the possibility of a potential second wave of deaths due to diseases and lack of proper nutrition.
This could be avoided through a more coordinated effort between the international community and the Myanmar government. Shelter and resettlement for the affected people is also a priority as many are living in cramped tents with inadequate sanitation facilities.
Furthermore, the assessment team reported that water concerns are paramount in Myanmar as many people do not have access to clean drinking water. The team also concluded that ASEAN can play a crucial role in helping the Myanmar government tackle the immediate needs, based on the grouping's long and trusted working relationship with the country.
To take the effort a step further, the United Nations and ASEAN have urged the international community to help the people in Myanmar. They will hold an ASEAN-UN International Pledging Conference in Yangon on Sunday, May 25. - CNA/so
The team reported that the overarching concern for the international community is access to affected areas. It also fears the possibility of a potential second wave of deaths due to diseases and lack of proper nutrition.
This could be avoided through a more coordinated effort between the international community and the Myanmar government. Shelter and resettlement for the affected people is also a priority as many are living in cramped tents with inadequate sanitation facilities.
Furthermore, the assessment team reported that water concerns are paramount in Myanmar as many people do not have access to clean drinking water. The team also concluded that ASEAN can play a crucial role in helping the Myanmar government tackle the immediate needs, based on the grouping's long and trusted working relationship with the country.
To take the effort a step further, the United Nations and ASEAN have urged the international community to help the people in Myanmar. They will hold an ASEAN-UN International Pledging Conference in Yangon on Sunday, May 25. - CNA/so
ႏုိင္ငံတကာ မ်ဳိးခ်စ္ျမန္မာမ်ားရဲ့ ေလေဘး ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအေရး လႈပ္ရွားမႈ
မဇၩိမသတင္းဌာန
တနလၤာေန႔၊ ေမလ 19 2008 20:27 - ျမန္မာစံေတာ္ခ်ိန္
ျမန္မာေလေဘး ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအတြက္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာေရာက္ မ်ဳိးခ်စ္ျမန္မာမ်ားက ရန္ပံုေငြ ေကာက္ခံမႈ၊ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္းသို႔ လိုအပ္သည့္ ပစၥည္းမ်ား တင္ပို႔မႈကို အင္တုိက္အားတုိက္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနၾကသည္။
ေလေဘးဒုကၡသည္မ်ား ကူညီေရးေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေရး လုပ္ငန္းမ်ားတြင္ လိုအပ္ေနသည့္ ေဆးဝါး၊ ရိကၡာႏွင့္ အသံုးအေဆာင္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားလည္း လိုက္လံေကာက္ခံ၍ ပို႔ေဆာင္ေပးေနသည့္ အေျခအေနမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ အိႏၵိယ၊ စကၤာပူ၊ အဂၤလန္၊ ဂ်ပန္၊ ထိုင္းႏွင့္ မေလးရွားမွ တာဝန္ရွိသူမ်ားႏွင့္ ဆက္သြယ္ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္မ်ားကို တင္ျပလိုက္ပါသည္။
ဦးဇင္း အဲမြန္ - ျမန္မာေလေဘး ဒုကၡသည္ေတြ ကူညီေရးအဖြဲ႔ (အိႏၵိယ)
ျမန္မာ ေလေဘး ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအတြက္ အလွဴေငြ ေကာက္ခံရာတြင္ ရူပီး ၅ ေသာင္းေက်ာ္ ရေနၿပီ ျဖစ္သည္။ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္းမွာရွိ သာသနာ့ ဥေသွ်ာင္ အဖြဲ႔ႀကီးသို႔ လဲႊေျပာင္း ပို႔သြားမည္ျဖစ္ကာ ၎တို႔မွတဆင့္ လိုအပ္သည့္ ေဆးဝါးႏွင့္ အျခားပစၥည္းမ်ား ဝယ္ယူ လွဴဒါန္းသြားမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ေငြသားမ်ားကို ဦးစြာ လဲႊေျပာင္းေပးပို႔မည္ ျဖစ္ၿပီး အဝတ္အစားမ်ားႏွင့္ ေဆးဝါးမ်ားကိုလည္း ထပ္မံ ပို႔ေဆာင္ရန္ စီစဥ္ထားသည္။
အိႏၵိယျပည္သူမ်ားထံမွလည္း အကူအညီမ်ား ဆက္လက္ ေကာက္ခံေနသည္။
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ကိုဝင္းေက်ာ္ (စကၤာပူ)
“စကၤာပူႏိုင္ငံမွာ ေလေဘးဒုကၡေတြနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အလွဴခံေနဆဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ မေန႔က ေကာက္ခံ ရရွိေငြ စုစုေပါင္းက စကၤာပူေဒၚလာ ၁ သိန္း ၃ နဲ႔ ၄ ေသာင္းၾကား ရရွိပါတယ္။ ေကာက္ခံ ရရွိေငြေတြကို အစိုးရလက္ထဲ မေရာက္ေအာင္၊ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြလက္ထဲ တိုက္ရိုက္ ေရာက္ေအာင္၊ က်ေနာ္တို႔တေတြ Overseas Burmese Patriots (OBP) ျပည္ပေရာက္ မ်ဳိးခ်စ္ ျမန္မာမ်ားအဖြဲ႔က ဦးေဆာင္ၿပီးေတာ့ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြလက္ထဲ တိုက္ရိုက္ေရာက္ေအာင္ လွဴဒါန္းေနပါတယ္။ အစိုးရကေနၿပီးေတာ့ အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိး ပိတ္ပင္တားဆီးမႈ ရွိပါတယ္။
အဲဒီ ၾကားထဲကေန အခက္အခဲေပါင္းစံု ရွိပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လူေတြကို စစ္အစိုးရကေန ေခၚယူ စစ္ေဆးေနတာေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ဘယ္လို အခက္အခဲေတြ ရွိေနပါေစ၊ ေရာက္ေအာင္ လွဴဒါန္းမယ္။ စကၤာပူေရာက္ေနတဲ့ ျမန္မာအားလံုးရဲ့ မ်ဳိးခ်စ္ ျမန္မာမ်ားရဲ့ အလွဴေငြကို စစ္အစိုးရလက္ထဲ မေရာက္ေအာင္၊ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြလက္ထဲ ေရာက္ေအာင္ ကိုယ္တိုင္ကိုယ္က် လွဴဒါန္းဖို႔အတြက္ အျမဲ ႀကိဳးစားေနပါတယ္။ ဆက္ၿပီးေတာ့လည္း လွဴဒါန္းေနပါတယ္။ ဘိုကေလး၊ ကြမ္းၿခံကုန္းမွာ ေသာက္ေရ အခက္အခဲ ရွိတယ္လို႔ သိရတယ္။
အဲဒီအတြက္ ေရရွည္ ေသာက္ႏိုင္ေအာင္အတြက္ ရည္ရြယ္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေသာက္ေရတြင္းေတြ တူးေပးဖို႔အတြက္ စကၤာပူမွာ လွဴဒါန္းရရွိတဲ့ ေငြေတြနဲ႔ စက္ေရတြင္းေတြ တူးေပးမယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ႏိုင္ငံတကာက အကူအညီေတြ မရခင္မွာ က်ေနာ္တို႔ အဖြဲ႔ရဲ့ ကူညီမႈဟာ အတိုင္းအတာတခုထိ ထိေရာက္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာခ်င္ပါတယ္။ စကၤာပူႏိုင္ငံက ဆန္အိတ္ေပါင္း ၅ဝဝဝ ေက်ာ္ လွဴဒါန္းၿပီးပါၿပီ။ ေဆးဝါးနဲ႔ တျခားပစၥည္းေတြလည္း လွဴဒါန္းၿပီး ျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ ျပည္တြင္းမွာ ေလေဘးကူညီမႈ အသင္းေတြကို ဆန္အိတ္ေပါင္း ၅ဝဝ လွဴဒါန္းထားတယ္။
ျပည္တြင္းမွာ ေလေဘးအတြက္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတဲ့ ရဟန္းေတာ္ေတြကတဆင့္ ဆန္အိတ္ေပါင္း ၂၅ဝ လွဴဒါန္းထားၿပီး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေဆး၊ အာလူး၊ ပဲတို႔ကိုလည္း စကၤာပူေငြ ၁ ေသာင္းခြဲဖိုးနဲ႔ ညီမွ်တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြကိုလည္း လွဴဒါန္းၿပီး ျဖစ္တယ္”
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ေဒါက္တာဝင္းႏိုင္ (အဂၤလန္)
“သာသနာ့ ဥေသွ်ာင္ အဖြဲ႔ကေန ဦးေဆာင္ၿပီး အလွဴေငြ ေကာက္ေနပါတယ္။ သာသနာ့ ဥေသွ်ာင္ ဥကၠ႒ မုဒံု ဆရာေတာ္ကေနၿပီး ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ တပတ္က ပထမဆံုးရတဲ့ ေပါင္ ၃ဝဝဝ ကို ျမန္မာျပည္အတြင္းမွာ ရွိတဲ့ ဆရာေတာ္ေတြ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ အဖြဲ႔ကို ပို႔ေဆာင္ထားပါတယ္။ လန္ဒန္ရွိ ဥထ္သမိ တကၠသုိလ္မွာလည္း ေလေဘးဒဏ္ ခံေနရတဲ့ ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ လွဴဒါန္းပြဲကို မေန႔က က်င္းပခဲ့ၿပီး ေပါင္ ၆ဝဝဝ ေကာက္ခံရရွိတယ္လို႔ သိရပါတယ္။
က်ေနာ္တို႔က အရမ္းလိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို အကူအညီေပးႏိုင္ေအာင္၊ လိုအပ္တာေတြ ပံပိုးေပးႏိုင္ေအာင္ ဒီကေန လုပ္ေပးေနတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တသီးပုဂၢဳိလ္ အလွဴရွင္ေတြလည္း ျမန္မာျပည္အတြင္းကို သြားေရာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေဆးဝါးနဲ႔ တျခားလိုအပ္တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြကို အကူအညီေပးဖို႔ သြားေနတာေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။
က်ေနာ္တို႔ လန္ဒန္ကေန ေဆာင္ရြက္မႈေတြကေတာ့ အခုအခ်ိန္အထိ ဘာမွ အေႏွာင့္အယွက္ မရွိေသးဘဲ ကူညီမႈ လုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေဆာင္ရြက္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ လာမယ့္ ဇြန္လ ၂၁ ရက္ေန႔မွာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ေမြးေန႔အတြက္ ရည္စူးၿပီး ေလေဘး ဒဏ္ခံေနရတဲ့ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြအတြက္ ရံပံုေငြရွာဖို႔ လန္ဒန္ၿမ့ဳိမွာ လုပ္မယ္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ေလေဘးကူညီဖို႔အတြက္ ပို႔ေငြေပါင္း ေဒၚလာ ၁ ေသာင္းခန္႔ရွိၿပီး လိုအပ္တဲ့ေဆးဝါးနဲ႔ လိုအပ္တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြ ဝယ္ယူဖို႔အတြက္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ထပ္ ေကာက္ခံရရွိတဲ့ ေငြကိုလည္း လာမယ့္ အပတ္ထဲမွာ ထပ္ပို႔သြားအံုးမွာပါ”
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ေဒါက္တာမင္းညိဳ (ဂ်ပန္)
“ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံမွာရွိတဲ့ ေလေဘး ကူညီေထာက္ပံ့ေရး အသင္းက အလွဴေငြ ယမ္း ၁ဝ သိန္း နီးပါးေလာက္ ေကာက္ခံရရွိတယ္ ေျပာတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔က ေန႔စဥ္ ေကာက္တာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ တေန႔ကို ၂ နာရီေလာက္ပဲ ေကာက္ႏိုင္တာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ တေန႔ကို ယမ္း ၇ ေသာင္းကေန ၁ သိန္းၾကား အလွဴေငြ လက္ခံ ရရွိတာ ျဖစ္တယ္။
က်ေနာ္ ဂ်ပန္မွာရွိတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြကေနတဆင့္ အလွဴေငြေတြ ေပါင္းၿပီးေတာ့ ျမန္မာျပည္ထဲကို ပို႔ေနၿပီ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ဂ်ပန္မွာရွိတဲ့ ျပည္သူေတြထံက ေလေဘး ဒုကၡသည္ေတြအတြက္ လူအင္အား စိုက္ၿပီးေတာ့ အလွဴခံလုပ္ငန္းေတြ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနတာေတြ ရွိတယ္။ ေကာက္ခံရရွိတဲ့ အလွဴေငြေတြကို ျမန္မာျပည္ အတြင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ တကယ္ ဒုကၡေရာက္ေနတဲ့ ျပည္သူေတြရဲ့ လက္ဝယ္ကို ေရာက္ရွိဖို႔အတြက္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတာ ျဖစ္တယ္။
အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြအျပင္ ပုဂၢိဳလိက ေက်ာင္းသူေတြကလည္း သူတို႔ တတ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ဘက္ကေန ျပည္သူလူထုအတြက္ ဝိုင္းဝန္း လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတာေတြ ရွိေနတယ္။ လူသားခ်င္း စာနာေထာက္ထားတဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္က စာသင္ေနတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသူေတြ၊ ေလေဘးဒဏ္ခံေနရတဲ့ ဒုကၡသည္ ျပည္သူေတြအတြက္ မိမိတို႔ လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အသိစိတ္ဓာတ္နဲ႔ ဝိုင္းဝန္း လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနပါတယ္”
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ကိုျမင့္စိုး - ျမန္မာေလေဘး ဒုကၡသည္ေတြ ကူညီေရးအဖြဲ႔ (ထုိင္း)
“ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံအေျခစိုက္ ေလေဘးဒုကၡသည္မ်ား ကူညီေရးအဖြဲ႔ကေနၿပီး ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ရက္က ျမန္မာျပည္အတြင္းကုိ လိုအပ္တဲ့ ေဆးပစၥည္းနဲ႔ အဝတ္အထည္ေတြကို ပို႔ေဆာင္လိုက္ပါတယ္။ ကြန္တိန္နာ တစီး ရွိပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံတကာမွာ ႏိုင္ငံျခားသားေတြက ကူညီေထာက္ပံ့တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြနဲ႔ လူသံုးကုန္ပစၥည္း တခ်ဳိ႔လည္း ပါတယ္။ ဒီပစၥည္းေတြကို ေလေဘးဒဏ္ ခံေနရတဲ့ ဘိုကေလးနဲ႔ လပြတၱာၿမ့ဳိကို ပို႔သြားမွာပါ။ ပို႔လိုက္တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြကေတာ့ မေန႔က ေရာက္သြားပါၿပီ။ ျပည္တြင္းမွာရွိတဲ့ ေလေဘးကူညီေရး အဖြဲ႔အစည္း အသီးသီးမွာ လိုက္လံ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးေနတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္”
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ကိုေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ - ျမန္မာေလေဘး ဒုကၡသည္ေတြ ကူညီေရးအဖြဲ႔ (မေလးရွား)
“မေလးႏိုင္ငံအေျခစိုက္ ျမန္မာ ေလေဘးဒုကၡသည္ေတြ ကူညီေရးအဖြဲ႔က ေဆးဝါးနဲ႔ တျခားပစၥည္းေတြကို ပို႔လိုက္ၿပီ။ ေဆးဝါးနဲ႔ တျခား လူသံုးကုန္ပစၥည္းေတြ၊ အဝတ္အထည္ေတြလည္း ပါတယ္။ အဓိက ပို႔တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြက ဝမ္းေရာဂါနဲ႔ ေရသန္႔ေဆးျပားေတြပါ။ မေလးေငြ ၃ ေသာင္းနဲ႔ ညီမွ်တဲ့ ပစၥည္းေတြ ပို႔တာပါ။ နယ္ျခားမဲ့ ဆရာဝန္ေတြကတဆင့္ လိုအပ္တဲ့ တျခားေဆးဝါးေတြကို ကူညီေထာက္ပံ့ေပးတယ္”
Thousands in Myanmar pray for strength
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- As the steady rain that had been falling all day eased off, monks at the Shwedagon Pagoda began to chant and the worshippers prayed. Many brought their children, some of whom laughed and played marbles in the pavilion.
Others just cried.
Pic: Buddhist monks clear the area surrounding the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon on Sunday.
Despite the passage of more than two weeks, the reminders of Cyclone Nargis are everywhere. The winds damaged the stupas and pavilion roofs of the hilltop temple. The cyclone tore off hundreds of gold leaf panels. Many precious stones fell off.
Still, Yangon's holiest shrine, reopened last Saturday after it was closed for five days of repairs following the May 2-3 cyclone, is once again up and running.
And the people are looking to it for solace.
While most people wore new and bright-colored clothes -- Monday was a special Buddhist holiday -- Kyaw Zaw Thanh and his 6-year-old son were wearing old and dirty white shirts. His wife and the child's mother are among the tens of thousands who remain missing after the storm.
"She went to visit her family in a village near Hpayapon three weeks ago," Kyaw Zaw Thanh said. "After the storm, I took a bus to the town and took a boat out to go see her family, but the house was completely flattened. We didn't find anyone there."
Another man and his son stood out in the crowd of thousands, sitting with a saffron-robed monk in one of the smaller pavilions that has not been fully renovated.
"He wouldn't eat, he wouldn't sleep. He wouldn't stop crying. He is afraid we won't find his mother," the man said, looking at the child, who stared at the floor as his tears continually fell.
"We pray for her. She might be in a camp. She may be trying to find her way," he said, with his hand on the child's shoulder.
Worshippers chanted prayers, burned incense and released birds around the grounds of the temple, which is not only a religious center but also a historical focal point for social and political protests. Monks gathered here for last September's big pro-democracy protests, which were brutally crushed by the military.
Kyi Mien, a woman in her 30s, said she has strengthened her prayers since the storm.
"We prayed for our family, health, future. And we prayed for those who lost their families to Nargis," she said, adding that she believed Yangon, Myanmar's main city and former capital, was spared because of the holiness of the Shwedagon.
"We pray that it will keep us safe," she added. "We keep hearing another storm might be coming. I am afraid it will hit without warning."
On a corner near the east gate of the pagoda, a notice board showed pictures of destroyed pagodas as volunteers asked pilgrims for money for renovation. A monk said they were not allowed by local authorities to put up pictures of cyclone victims or hungry and desperate survivors.
But since it's a religious site, pictures of destroyed pagodas were allowed.
But since it's a religious site, pictures of destroyed pagodas were allowed.
"They don't want to upset people," he said.
As Tuesday dawned, a three-day official period of mourning began for the dead, which numbered more than 78,000, according to official figures. Another 56,000 people are missing.
As Tuesday dawned, a three-day official period of mourning began for the dead, which numbered more than 78,000, according to official figures. Another 56,000 people are missing.
Myanmar agrees to accept ASEAN cyclone aid
BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Myanmar has agreed to let its South Asian neighbors send medical personnel and an assessment team to the cyclone-ravaged country, more than two weeks after a storm that killed tens of thousands of people.
Monday's decision came after an emergency meeting in Singapore of the 10 countries that make up ASEAN -- the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said.
The top U.N. aid official, John Holmes, toured the worst-hit areas of the country Monday and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to arrive in Myanmar on Wednesday in an attempt to "accelerate relief efforts."
The military junta that rules Myanmar -- formerly known as Burma -- has been strongly criticized by the United Nations and United States, among others, for its reluctance to let foreign aid workers into the country.
People in the worst-affected areas say they have received no help at all from their government, a CNN correspondent in the country has discovered.
ေသေဘးမွ လြတ္ေၿမာက္လာေသာ ေလေဘးဒုကၡသည္မ်ား၏ ရင္ဖြင္႔ခ်က္မ်ား
Myanmar lined with corpses
A CNN reporter slips into Myanmar's "forbidden" zone, bringing back horrific images and interviews with victims.
People in the worst-affected areas say they have received no help at all from their government, a CNN correspondent in the country has discovered.
"I have been trying to contact our government representative for two weeks," the village chief in Don Le said. "But so far I have received no reply." A quarter of the village's population was killed by the cyclone.
A villager named Ko U showed CNN where his house used to stand -- and the place where he found the body of his three-year-old daughter.
"I dug her out of the mud and buried her on other side of the river," he said.
Corpses still line the shores along some parts the Irrawaddy Delta, the part of the country hardest-hit by the cyclone.
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