LONDON (AP) - Last year's Asian tsunami hit poor people far harder than the middle class and wealthy, and the aid effort could worsen the income gap between the rich and the poor in affected regions, a major aid group warned Saturday. Nearly six months after the enormous Dec. 26 disaster, Oxfam said those aiding the survivors must work hard to reach out to the poor and help them build better lives than they had before.Just replacing the destroyed assets of landowners and businesspeople would leave behind those who owned little and exacerbate the divide between rich and poor, the agency said. "Desperately poor people have been made poorer still by the tsunami," said Oxfam's Britain director, Barbara Stocking.
Poor people's wooden homes were more likely to be ruined than wealthier victims' brick and stone ones, the agency said. Many poor homeowners have been unable to get compensation for destroyed abodes because they had no deeds. And those who rented informally were often left with nowhere to live, Oxfam said. "These people were already more vulnerable to such disasters because they didn't have any assets, they didn't have insurance, they didn't have any alternate incomes, they didn't have savings ... so when the tsunami came it washed away everything," Cox said.
While many fishermen are getting help in buying new boats and equipment, poor Indians who worked at salt pans that silted over had to move and search for scarce jobs, Oxfam said.
In Sri Lanka, those with businesses that were not registered with the government are finding it harder to access help than more established traders, it reported. Indonesians who worked at ruined small prawn and fish ponds now have no way to make a living, Oxfam said.