Thirteen days after the ‘Eye' followed a devastating trail of destruction, people in the coastal area are still laregly deprived of any electricity and are facing shortages of clean water and shelter. Only 1500 out of 18000 tube wells are functioning although the government is putting a lot of effort in to get this situation reversed. Some 1500 km roads in 2 coastal districts have been damaged and the cyclone simply washed away some 600 km of flood control embankment. Around 3000 primary schools have been severely damaged or are out of use, 800 cattle farms and 2000 poultry farms in the affected region have been destroyed. Whereas Bangladesh is one of 4 top rice producing nations in the world, the seasonal heavy flooding and the cyclone are now seriously impacting countries' food security. Rice might need to be imported from other countries in the region. Retail market prices are going up and the government expects that the Bangladesh economy enters its most critical phase since'71, amongst others as consequence of the floods and cyclone.

 

The government is very active with relief activities and the local army and navy are fully involved. Experts say though that it will take months before relief supply points for helicopters, hovercraft and trucks have been identified and constructed. It will take a well coordinated effort to get helipads, landing points, storage facilities, security, identified, put in place and working. It will take time also to determine what amounts of drinking water, food, shelter, medication are required where and when. And then there's the task of making vehicles, aircraft, helicopters available, also longer term,  while making sure also that there's enough fuel to keep going. A task of un-imaginable size and magnitude for this extremely poor country. Massive and coordinated worldwide aid is needed in order to help the country to stay afloat.

In this kind of environment, TNT Bangladesh have responded rather swiftly to the consequences of the disaster, by rendering assistance to WFP in Bangladesh and giving first hand support to the seriously affected families of TNT employees.

The country general manger, Turab ur Rahman, eventually decided to call upon the support of the Moving The World program office and last week it was decided by TNT to pledge USD 25.000 for the TNT affected families and to deploy 2 members of the Emergency Response team to Bangladesh, in order to support a number of local projects with WFP and to support TNT with relief work for the 41 families of TNT employees who are affected by the cyclone.

Ridzwan D'Cruz arrived from TNT Singapore on Monday night and I did the night before. Our first time ever in Bangladesh. My arrival time at 02:15am got me on the dark roads to my hotel by 03:00am. But in spite of the early morning hour, there was plenty of activity going on just about anywhere. Tuk-tuks and rickshaws scattered all over the place and the road opposite my hotel was literally cluttered with dozens of old trucks and lorries filled way over capacity with all sorts of commodities that were being traded there and then. A couple of big open fires turned the view of that street into a very peculiar spectacle. Unfortunately it was way too dark for me to take a picture. Everything I have seen sofar reminds me of the days I lived and worked in Pakistan.

On Monday  I was picked up by Turab and  Zahid Abuzafur (Country Ops Manger) and we had the opportunity to visit the U.N. offices in Dhaka, in order attend to the first Logistics Cluster meeting, organized and chaired by the WFP. The objective of this meeting to assess existing logistics capacity within Bangladesh and to facilitate inter-agency logistics coordination. Some 18 different organizations attended, some of which included OCHA, UNICEF, Oxfam, Actionaid, CARE, Safe the Children. As they positioned a US Navy battleship in the harbor of Chittagong, even the US Navy participated in the meeting. Through coordination in the logistics cluster, gaps, bottlenecks and duplication should be prevented and possibly joint usage of transportation, distribution and warehouse resources be strived for. In order to achieve this, the individual organizations were asked to present their own logistics assessment during the next meeting to be held on Thursday this week. From there on operational logistics support can be started up and a common operational strategy and logistics operational plan for the humanitarian response be put in place. Mind you, we are talking thirteen days after the cyclone took place. This doesn't mean that nothing has been happening but it confirms that a lot of time is needed to make realistic requirements visible and clear.

A first 'hands -on' project agreed between WFP and TNT has been the transportation of 750 metric tons of rice. Turab and Zahid put an operation in place through local trucking companies and seconded 5 TNT employees to Jamalpur, around 200 km north of Dhaka, to coordinate the effort. The first truck was loaded last Saturday morning and by Wednesday this week some 50 trucks will have completed the 500 km journey into the cyclone affected area, delivering the rice to WFP in the affected area. Tremendous job done by the TNT staff involved. This went extremely well and no involvement from Ridzwan or myself was needed. Similar new projects could be expected.

With regards to the relief work for families from TNT employees, yesterday 3 TNT managers returned from their site visit to these families. They completed an inventory of relief material needed. Together with Turab and his management team we put a plan in place to purchase and transport construction material for damages houses, blankets, rice, water purification tablets, children's clothes, O.R.S., dahl, sugar, high energy biscuits, utensils, rice and rice seeds. All of this will be funded from the USD 25.000 pledged by TNT.

There are other projects in the pipeline and we will follow up with details after the requirements for TNT from Thursday's meeting with WFP have become clear.

We are both happy and feel privileged to be here to try and make a difference to the people of Bangladesh, one way or another. In view of the size and shape of the disaster and possible involvement for TNT, we feel a number of longer term support projects might come out. This in turn could require longer term assistance, also from the Moving the World Program.