Bureaucratic hurdles hamper tsunami relief work in Indian islands

Published: 2006-01-26

PANAJI, India (CNS) -- The Catholic Church is facing bureaucratic hurdles in providing assistance for tsunami survivors in eastern Indian islands, said a priest in charge of relief work. The government hurdles and uncertainty continue to haunt the survivors, who have to live in small tin sheds that "heat up in the sun and leak when it rains," Pilar Father Attley Gomes told UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand. He was interviewed in India's western state of Goa in late January. Father Gomes, who works in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, said the survivors have received little quality relief since the December 2004 tsunami. The territory of about 550 islands in the Indian Ocean lies about 620 miles east of the Indian mainland and is about 120 miles from Banda Aceh, Indonesia, the epicenter of the undersea earthquake that sent giant waves sweeping across the Indian Ocean region. Only approximately 40 of the islands in the federally administered territory are populated, but several thousand residents were killed or went missing in the tsunami disaster.

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