Myanmar makes progress in rebuilding after Cyclone Nargis, UN says

Jul 28, 2008, 22:08 GMT

New York - The government in Myanmar has made 'quite a lot of progress' in post-Cyclone Nargis reconstruction efforts since the disaster struck in May, the top UN humanitarian affairs official said Monday.

John Holmes returned to New York following a three-day visit to Myanmar, saying he saw a return to normalcy in areas affected by the devastating cyclone, which left more than 140,000 dead and missing people. Some 2.5 million people still need assistance to cope with the disaster's aftermath.

Holmes said there was no room for complacency because of the magnitude of the destruction.

'Quite a lot of progress has been made since I was last there two months ago - a lot of houses have been repaired since we were last there, a lot of work has been done on schools and clinics to try and get them back into better shape, and it was possible to see a lot of activity going on in the fields,' Holmes said at UN headquarters in New York.

He said hundreds of international aid workers are now deployed in Myanmar's worst hit area, the southern Irrawaddy delta. The aid groups from the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are working well together, he said.

'We can't say for certain that we've reached 100 per cent of the affected people but we can say that we have reached virtually everyone with some kind of aid,' he said.

He said the next six months require a working pipeline of relief aid because people in remote areas are still hard to reach. About 200 million dollars of the total UN appeal of 482 million dollars in aid for 2009 have been pledged by donors and governments, he said.