PM cancels tour of southern coast as agencies struggle to recover the dead and feed survivors
The difficulty of organising basic relief for the tens of thousands of victims in India became clear yesterday when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cancelled a tour of the southern coastal region that was devastated by the tsunami.
As a shell-shocked administration, along with the army and private charities, struggled to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy, the basic task of recovering the many bodies of those killed in scores of fishing hamlets in Tamil Nadu state had not been completed more than 48 hours later.
'The prime minister's tour has been postponed as he did not want the visit to disrupt any of the relief work,' said an aide.
Instead, Mr Singh called an emergency meeting in New Delhi of a ministerial committee set up to co-ordinate relief operations. The central government also allocated 5 billion rupees ($889 million) in aid to the victims.
'The tsunami was a new experience for India - this region has seen many cyclones, but the devastation this time of fishermen's communities is mind-boggling,' said Anton Gomes, president of the National Union of Fishermen, supervising activities at a fishermen's relief centre in Chennai.
'The government is not giving a clear picture. According to our estimate, at least 15,000 fishermen and their family members have been killed by the tsunami in Tamil Nadu alone.'
