India’s tsunami victims abandoned

The tsunami killed more than 11,000 people in India and another 2.7 million people were affected. The majority of victims were from fishing communities, while 15 percent came from farming families and 5 percent worked in small businesses.

The devastated areas included 12 districts of Tamil Nadu, villages in Pondicherry and Andhra Pradesh and parts of the west coast of Kerala. In Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal, where about 3,500 people were killed, about 46,000 residents are still living in temporary shelters.

Throughout India over 150,000 houses were fully or partially destroyed. The government claims that 46,000 have been replaced with “disaster resistant houses” and promises to build another 40,000 houses for people whose houses were not damaged but who were living within 200 metres of the high tide line.

These figures, however, are difficult to believe as soon as one visits some of the affected areas. Although non-government organisations (NGOs) have begun constructing 32,207 houses only 1,564 have been completed.

Long-term reconstruction projects—a 1.66 billion rupee World Bank funded project and a 5.61 billion rupee Asian Development Bank project—have been cleared by the Tamil Nadu state government. However it will take two years to complete them, according to authorities.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/india-d30.shtml