United Nations Humanitarian Chief John Holmes arrived here Tuesday on a re-visit to Myanmar to look into post-disaster relief and resettlement status in the country which was severely hit by a cyclone storm early last May.
Holmes, who is Under Secretary-General for U.N. Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, will spend three days in the country, during which he will visit cyclone-hard-hit Ayeyawaddy and Yangon divisions and meet Prime Minister General Thein Sein who is also Chairman of National Disaster Preparedness Central Committee, according to the U.N. sources.
Holmes's trip came a day after the simultaneous release at Singapore ASEAN Foreign Ministerial Meeting and Yangon of a Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) Report on the impact of the Myanmar cyclone compiled by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Myanmar and the United Nations.
The report estimated the total damage and losses due to the cyclone storm at over 4 billion U.S. dollars, stressing that the preliminary recovery needs will be at over 1 billion dollars over the next three years.
Based on the findings of the PONJA, the U.N. made revised plea for 482 million dollars to aid Myanmar storm victims, of which 178million has been raised during the first U.N. flash appeal on May 9.
The PONJA report, compiled after a 10-day survey on 291 villages in 30 cyclone-worst-affected townships in two divisions of Ayeyawaddy and Yangon involving over 250 experts, held that the already-begun relief and early recovery activities will continue to be implemented until 2009.
During his first trip to Myanmar in late May after cyclone, Holmes toured some three hard-hit areas of Laputta, Bogalay and Wakema in Ayeyawaddy division.
Also in that month, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Myanmar successively and an ASEAN-U.N. International Pledging Conference, participated by 51 donor countries and 24 U.N. organizations and international non-governmental ones, was held in Yangon to seek further international financial aid commitment for Myanmar's cyclone aid relief and rehabilitation efforts.
The meeting agreed to establish a Yangon-based tripartite core group comprising representatives from ASEAN, Myanmar and U.N. as a working mechanism for coordination, facilitating and monitoring the flow of international assistance into the country following the establishment of an ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force, led by Surin.
The tripartite core group also claimed that its aid efforts for transit of relief items into Myanmar and down into the cyclone-hard-hit delta have reached over 1.3 million victims.
Deadly tropical cyclone Nargis, which occurred over the Bay of Bengal, hit five divisions and states on last May 2 and 3 killed 84,537 people, left 53,836 people missing, according to the PONJA report.
Source:Xinhua
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