Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Jan 2, 2005; a post on andamanicobar@yahoogroups.co.in; revisiting the tsunami of Dec 2004

Jan 2, 2005
2230 hrs
Dear Friends,
This is based on a short telephonic conversation that I have just had with Samir Acharya in Port Blair. Following a joint NGO meeting earlier in the day in Port Blair today, they were to meet the Lt. Governor for an interaction later in the evening. While earlier the LG had indicated that NGos would working in the islands, there was a dramatic shift in what they were told in the meeting in the evening.
All the NGOs interested in working here are being given forms which they have to fill and submit to the administration. A decision will then be taken five days from now. While we cannot be sure of the reasons for this, it does seem it is linked to the fact that the responsibility for disaster management in the islands has been shifted from the civil administration to the defence. That this would happen was also reported in the Indian Express today. It has also been decided that the official spokes person would now be Commander in Chief of the Integrated Command, Lt. Gen BS Thakur.
This does not presumably impact the ongoing work in Port Blair where about 11 relief camps are operating at the moment, but would certainly affect the possibilities of anyone who wants to or can work in the Nicobars in particular and even some parts of the other islands like Little Andaman where administration help will be needed in terms of access and logistics.

On another front, based on all the information and offers of help that have come to this egroup and some other initiatives, we at Kalpavriksh are now finalising a matrix that will try and put all this information together. hopefully it will be ready by tomorrow when we will send it out and also try and put it on a couple of webpages that we intend to create for the Andamans. Supriya had offered to do that and if there are a couple of other offers, that too would be useful.

thanks
pankaj sekhsaria

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