Mission & Justice

10/10/08

The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) has described the management of SBD$21 Million provided for the immediate relief assistance to Western Province and Choiseul after the earthquake and Tsunami disaster in April last year as “very poor.” The OAG comment is contained in an Audit Report into how the $21 Million provided for immediate relief assistance to the Tsunami victims was spent. The $21 Million was part of a total of SBD$39,972,023 funding assistance provided by the Solomon Islands Government, overseas donors, and from local donations. $338, 628 of the total amount came from unidentified donations, according to the Report. The OAG Report shows that at the time of the audit about $4 Million was still not utilized and the OAG 2008 June Report does not cover the $15 Million Solomon Islands Government assistance channelled through the nine (9) Western Province’s MPs and two (2) of the three (3) Choiseul MPs.

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25/6/08

International donors at a conference on the Middle East in Berlin have committed $242m for security projects that they hope will help in creating a viable Palestinian state. The money will be passed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) over the next three years to be spent on security measures such as more police stations and courthouses. The conference is being attended by more than 40 government delegation, including the Middle East Quartet of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia. The money comes out of $7.4bn already pledged by donors in Paris in December, a month after peace efforts in the area were relaunched in Annapolis in the US.

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Mark Dodd; 14/6/08

The UN had received only 56per cent of the pledged donations to help victims of Burma’s devastating Cyclone Nargis, the organisation said yesterday. It had set a goal of $US201.6million ($215million) for its relief efforts but so far had received only $US113.2million, or 56per cent, from government donors. As the UN tried to rally governments to make good on their vows, Burma’s junta yesterday said it could not trust any contribution from the US. In a clear reference to the US, a media mouthpiece for the regime warned that “the goodwill of a big Western nation that wants to help Myanmar (Burma) with its warships was not genuine”.

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Aunohita Mojumdar; 12/6/08

As the Afghan government and the international donor community meet in Paris on June 12 to decide the future nature of assistance to the war-ravaged nation, NGOs and rights groups are urging that the needs of ordinary citizens come first. Some $15 billion has been spent on reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan since the US-led coalition deposed the Taliban and set up a democratic-influenced government in 2000. But international aid groups believe donor priorities continue to overlook the needs of the people.Oxfam, the international development agency which has maintained a long-term commitment and experience in Afghanistan, is critical of both the quantity and quality of aid that has been disbursed in the country.

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29/5/08

China has asked Japan to send its military to help with earthquake relief operations as powerful new aftershocks heightened fears that a huge “quake lake” threatening 1.3 million people could burst and trigger massive floods in the area. If granted, the request would be the first time Japan’s military has been deployed in China since the end of World War II. Chinese authorities yesterday evacuated more than 158,000 people from dozens of villages in the Beichuan region of Sichuan province - one of the hardest hit by the devastating May 12 quake. The China Daily quoted Premier Wen Jiabao as telling a meeting of the State Council, China’s cabinet, that 35 swelling lakes created by the quake were the “most pressing task”.

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Paul Maley; 14/5/08

Senior aid officials in Burma have warned that Australia’s first aid shipment to the stricken country, which arrived yesterday, will almost certainly be rebadged as the property of the Burmese Government, with sizeable portions likely to be siphoned off by corrupt officials. Kevin Rudd yesterday launched a fresh attack on the “demonstrably inadequate” response of the Burmese junta to the May 2 cyclone, which has left up to 100,000 people dead and a further 1.5 million homeless. The Prime Minister told parliament an RAAF C-117 Globemaster aircraft had touched down in Rangoon with 31 tonnes of supplies. On board were water purification tablets, medical supplies, tarpaulins and blankets.

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Aung Hla Tun; 12/5/08

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta yesterday in search of food, water and medicine as aid workers warned that up to 1.5 million faced death if emergency supplies did not get through soon. Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm’s trail of destruction were now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly as millions of dollars in emergency aid was stalled on airport tarmacs pending permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists were waiting for visas. The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including from the UN, but has made clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

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Aung Hla Tun; 12/5/08

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta yesterday in search of food, water and medicine as aid workers warned that up to 1.5 million faced death if emergency supplies did not get through soon. Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm’s trail of destruction were now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly as millions of dollars in emergency aid was stalled on airport tarmacs pending permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists were waiting for visas. The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including from the UN, but has made clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

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