Myanmar evicts cyclone victims from temporary housing

Vietnam News.Net
Friday 30th May, 2008

Destitute families are being pushed out of government-run cyclone relief centres, due to government concerns the tent cities might become more permanent.

Officials of the junta have been quoted as saying the people will be better off back in their homes 'where they are more stable.'

The New Light of Myanmar, a government newspaper, also warned that foreign relief workers could snoop around while pretending to give help.

The newspaper has condemned world donors for linking aid money to full access to the hardest-hit regions in the Irrawaddy Delta.

Locals and aid workers said there were 39 camps in the immediate vicinity of Kyauktan, 30 kilometres south of Rangoon, being cleared out as part of the wave of evictions.

The victims had only been given bamboo poles and some tarpaulins to the camps the Irrawaddy Delta, where 134,000 people were left dead or missing by Cyclone Nargis on May 2nd.

Four weeks after the disaster, the United Nations says fewer than one in two of the 2.4 million people affected by the cyclone have received any form of help from either the government, or international or local aid groups.

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