CYCLONE SIDR: THE TIME TO REBUILD IS NOW

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DHAKA 000201

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DCHA/OFDA FOR ROBERT THAYER
AID/W FOR AA MARK WARD AND ANE ANNE DIX
DEPT PASS TO SCA/EX
DEPT PASS TO SCA/PB
KATHMANDU FOR USAID OFDA BILL BERGER AND SUE MCINTYRE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/13/2018
TAGS: EAID PINR PREL BG
SUBJECT: CYCLONE SIDR: THE TIME TO REBUILD IS NOW
(C0RRECTED)


Classified By: CDA a.i. Geeta Pasi. Reasons: 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (C) SUMMARY: The transition from emergency relief to
reconstruction assistance is going poorly three months after
Cyclone Sidr tore through southern Bangladesh. While the
Caretaker Government and its local and international partners
deserve strong marks for providing the food, clothing and
potable water urgently needed in the storm's immediate
aftermath, not enough is being done to provide the shelter
and livelihoods that are now so desperately needed. With the
rainy season fast approaching and harvests still looming far
in the distance, the next phase of Sidr recovery needs to
gather steam fast. It is time to rebuild homes, make credit
available and create jobs to fix the region's fractured
infrastructure. Otherwise, the initial successful response to
the disaster could all be for naught. END SUMMARY.


2. (SBU) A USG interagency team of Department of State,
Department of Defense and U.S. Agency for International
Development personnel visited Patuakhali and Barguna
districts in southern Bangladesh in early February to assess
cyclone reconstruction needs. (NOTE: The findings of a second
interagency team that canvassed southwestern Bangladesh will
be reported SEPTEL. END NOTE) The team found that much has
gone well since Sidr upended the region on November 15.
Although most crops were destroyed, people are receiving food
through ongoing emergency relief. Although many schools were
damaged, classes are in session and are filled with children.
Although much livestock was killed, fields and villages teem
with cattle, goats and poultry. Towns bustle with commerce.
There are no overt signs of unrest. Villagers say relief
distribution has generally been fair and has not been marked
by significant graft.


3. (SBU) Yet all is far from well. Village upon village
visited by the team are scarred by heavily damaged houses and
bare mud foundations where once stood homes blown apart or
washed away in Sidr's fury. The government has distributed
5,000 taka (approximately USD 71) to families who lost their
homes and 2,000 taka (approximately USD 29) to families whose
homes were partially damaged; the near universal complaint is
that these sums are not nearly enough to rebuild. As a
result, many villagers are living in hovels, pieced together
with blue polyurethene, tin sheets and pieces of wood; often,
the roofs have gaping holes through which rain will pour once
the wet season starts in a few months.


4. (SBU) Credit is not flowing to the fishermen and small
shopkeepers whose livelihoods were torn asunder by Sidr. The
main commercial street in Bogirhat town in Barguna district
is lined with shuttered stores that were destroyed or damaged
by Sidr. Typically, such businesses would seek a loan from
one of the large domestic non-governmental organizations that
have played a central role in Bangladesh's development. Yet
Shumon Kumarshil, a local official with BRAC, a major NGO,
said his group had provided credit to only two Bogirhat
entrepreneurs since the cyclone -- 80,000 taka (USD 1,142) to
a pharmacist and 150,000 taka (USD 2,143) to a rice trader.
The NGO charged 12.5% interest over the 10-month life of the
loan, more stringent terms than were offered before the
cyclone. "The monthly installment is high," acknowledged
Shumon. "Most people can't afford it." The number of smaller,
micro-credit loans from BRAC is way down since Sidr,
according to local BRAC officials, in part because people who
lost everything in the storm are not able to pay off their
earlier borrowings.


5. (SBU) BRAC plans a separate loan program for the fishermen
who lost their boats and nets, but a visit to the nearby
fishing village of Moupara found its main industry nearly
dead in the water. One fisherman, Mohammad Sorhab Hossain,
wearing a tattered T-shirt bearing the words "nautical crew,"
lost his boat and nets in the storm; his family of nine
people is trying to manage on the 50 taka (about 70 cents) he
ekes out each day using previously retired, worn nets and a
rickety boat he bought for 500 taka (USD 7). His family is
down to two meagre meals a day, primarily dahl (lentils) and

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vegetables he can scavage from the village.


6. (SBU) The dirt road to Moupara is in awful repair, damaged
from the raging tide that overflowed the banks of the
adjacent Payra River during the cyclone. Infrastructure -- be
it roads, embankments, tube wells, sluice gates, or public
buildings -- is hurting all over the region but there are few
work-for-food or work-for-money programs for villagers to
join. In Moupara, BRAC paid 40 women 100 taka (approximately
USD 1.50) a day for a month to help rebuild roads, but that
program has ended. While local officials throughout the
region complain that the inflow of aid has made villagers
lazy, it is just as much the lack of work that is keeping
them idle -- the team did not see one group working on
infrastructure as it traveled extensively through Patuakhali
and Barguna districts in the first week of February. Indeed,
Moupara headman Shahad Talukder said perhaps as many as
one-fifth of village families had gone to Chittagong and
Dhaka in search of work as rickshaw cyclists or in ready-made
garment factories. A few days later the team met three women
in Mithaganj union of Patuakhali district whose husbands left
for Dhaka to work as day laborers loading ships. Shirin, a
26-year-old mother of two small daughters, said her husband
was earning 150 taka (approximately USD 2.20) a day, slightly
more than he made in Mithaganj as a fieldhand. She said he
left for Dhaka two months earlier and planned to return in
two weeks to check on local job prospects.


7. (SBU) Local officials say the current government food
assistance for particularly vulnerable people is 15 kilograms
of rice per family each month for four months -- in many of
the areas the team visited the second distribution had just
been made. Yet the earliest harvest in villages that can
plant two rice crops yearly is August; other villages that
plant one rice crop annually will have to wait until the end
of the year. Extended food aid certainly will be necessary,
but so too will programs that restore livelihoods and create
work programs to ensure everyone has enough to eat. Also
important for successful reconstruction will be greater
coordination between the government and various aid givers.
We heard, for example, that some villagers were not taking
their government grants to rebuild homes, in hopes of
receiving more money from other donors, such as Saudi Arabia.


8. (C) COMMENT: The rush of emergency aid into southern
Bangladesh in the immediate aftermath of Sidr stabilized the
stricken region. Three months on, however, the loss of
livelihood, shelter and other infrastructure remains largely
unaddressed. The USG comprehensive plan for Sidr relief
envisioned from the start a major reconstruction component to
follow the initial phase of emergency aid. The moment for
that transition has arrived; the victims of Cyclone Sidr face
worsening deprivation and discontent if reconstruction
efforts by the Government of Bangladesh and its local and
international partners do not move forward with alacrity. END
COMMENT.
Pasi