Tamil Nadu

U.N. tsunami recovery support team scaling down operations

CHENNAI: Four years after the United Nations sent its multi-disciplinary team to set up office in Chennai to help coordinate recovery efforts post tsunami, the UN Team for Tsunami Recovery Support (UNTRS) is scaling down its operations in preparation to withdrawal from the country in December this year.

“We are winding up in December and have started scaling down operations,” Benjamin Laroquette, UN Tsunami Recovery Manager, told The Hindu. “It has been quite a successful programme. We did not start with the objective of taking up the entire rehabilitation work. We had an informal agreement with the government of Tamil Nadu to provide technical back-up wherever possible and support the reconstruction and recovery efforts.”

An external team will be evaluating the projects implemented or supported by the UNTRS. The office has received, over four years, funds amounting to US $ 15 million, 92 per cent of which went into funding the rehabilitation process, the remaining 8 per cent is accounted as running costs.

The objective was to have pilot projects that could be scaled up and made sustainable. The team worked in close collaboration with various government departments and reliable NGOs, Mr. Laroquette said. In the initial stages, the team also helped set up coordination centres in various districts and at the State level, the UNTRC, which will now be taken over by the State government and run as the Disaster Management Resource Centre.

“We did a lot of pilot projects in various areas like livelihood rehabilitation, education, healthcare, child safety, water and sanitation and disaster preparedness and have introduced new technologies in these areas which have received a lot of positive response,” Mr. Laroquette said. Their inputs in building disaster-resistant houses, disaster preparedness and documentation have particularly been useful, State government officials acknowledged. The team has much praise for the way the government of Tamil Nadu and the Centre managed the catastrophe at the relief stage.

“There were issues later with temporary shelters, water and sanitation, but considering the scale of the damage, it was only likely they cropped up,” he said.

However, during the first three months people were taken care of, the epidemics portended by experts did not break out. Tamil Nadu has a relatively more organised and professional approach to handling the crisis.

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