UN says criticism of Vanuatu aid response is unfounded

Transcript

The United Nations Disaster Assessment Coordination team leader in Vanuatu says criticism of the government's aid response in the wake of cyclone Pam is unfounded.

Vanuatu's government has come under fire for not distributing foreign aid as soon as it arrived after the category five cyclone three weeks ago.

But Sebastian Rhodes Stampa says authorities were dealing with a disaster on an unprecedented scale and handled it magnificently.

He told Jamie Tahana his organisation is now undertaking a second phase of assessment to try and develop a longer-term plan for Vanuatu's recovery.

SEBASTIAN RHODES STAMPA: We came in and supported the government in doing the initial assessments which led to the first response plan and it led to a number of appeals being drafted and sent out to the international community, donors and friends of Vanuatu. We appealed back then for US$29.9 million to support the government's response. That's about 36% funded at the moment, so we've got just over $10 million and that's enabled the agencies from the UN and their agency partners to kick start their operations and a large delivery of food, shelter, medical equipment and wash items -- so water sanitation hygiene -- have already gone out to 22 affected islands. What we're doing now is conducting a second phase of assessments, more detailed assessments, to find out if there's still any people at need, if there are priorities that are going to change our current response planning. And we do that basically so we can have a longer-term plan basically to support the government to support the people of Vanuatu. So we're still addressing some fairly critical needs, but we're also looking at the life-sustaining and early recovery needs. I mean, you've got something like 95% of crops wiped out in the affected area, and people need planting kits and seeds so they can start getting a crop in now for the next harvest.

JAMIE TAHANA: We know it was a massive cyclone and swept down much of the country, in terms of coordinating this response and stuff how difficult is it?

SRS: Well I think it's always a challenge and there'll always be challenges in every disaster, they're very complex-specific. But one of the particular challenges here of course was that from the northern to southern tip of the archipelago you're looking at 80 plus islands stretched out over 1,300 kilometres. The communications were down, and government and ourselves restored that very quickly so that we could begin the coordination effort. I have to say that the government of Vanuatu, their National Disaster Management Office and the Prime Minister's Office is very strong, they're almost certainly one of the stronger if not the strongest disaster management system in this region and they've performed magnificently. What we've come in to do is to support coordination and plug any gaps and of course there were a few, in any disaster there are. It's been challenging, but I think it's gone very well.

JT: There was initially some criticism of the NDMO that it was holding off distributing aid too long and such. Is that a criticism that's unfounded?

SRS: I think the NDMO and ourselves would always like aid to flow faster than it actually does, but when you're dealing with issues of access, when you're dealing with the distances and the sheer volume of relief items we were trying to move you can never move fast enough. I don't think criticism directed at the NDMO or indeed any part of the relief operation is justified. I mean, I've done this a lot, I've been in a number of different responses from Haiyan to Tohoku, and I think they have done a bang-up job in getting the aid out to the people who need it.

JT: And so from here where do we go? These assessments are completed, there's still a lot of distribution to be done. Over what time frame are you looking to do this?

SRS: The initial distributions are complete, there'll be a second phase of distributions, we've still got some assessments ongoing to fine-tune that and that'll go on for at least the next three months and I suspect the government will revise the longer-term delivery of assistance over to something like a six month period. But then of course you have early recovery, the rebuilding and build back better projects that seek to restore health infrastructure, schools and so on and so forth. There's no short-term fix to that, we'll do what we can and the government will do what they can in the next three months, but it's going to be a longer-term process.