Ooops!!!
So much for the "stingy" nonsense.....
the media had it wrong...(again)
Tsunami: $35 Million Dollar Myth
The left immediately leapt upon the news reports about the $35 million U.S. that the United States announced for aid in the South Asia tsunami relief. Unfortunately, all of the commentary and editorials and blogging were just plain wrong. Because Old Media failed to report the facts, that were presented to them quite clearly by USAID in a briefing on December 29.
Here's the big news that was not reported:
The $35,000,000.00 U.S. was petty cash!
Here's the quote from the director of USAID:
We have committed $35 million into what is basically a drawdown savings account and the teams in the field, as they do their assessments, can pull down that money and spend it right on the spot. We do our response directly through our teams or through contributions to nongovernmental organizations. And some of the best in the world are now sending their best relief managers to the scene. We'll be working with them.
In other words, if the assessment teams saw a need that could be addressed immediately, they could write a check on the spot.
We will complete our assessment, our initial fast assessments, according to international standards. There's a manual that's on our website, if you want to read it. It's called, "The Field Officer's Guide." It's a red book. Everybody carries it with them. It shows exactly how you do the assessment in each of the sectors, how you prepare your response plan, and then money is taken out of that $35 million account. That is, however, an only an initial amount of money. We always send them in with some money so they can spend it on the spot, if they need it. We will be making additional contributions as the assessments come in.
Got that? Really simple to understand. But Old Media did not report it at all.
The United States is not stingy. We put $35 million to IMMEDIATE use for immediate needs.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I'm Andrew Natsios, the Administrator of USAID. We have stood up the Response Management Team, the RMT, which is the AID 24-hour/7-day-a-week disaster response center here in Washington. We did that on Sunday, Sunday morning. We deployed a DART team, a Disaster Assistance Response Team, of technical disaster relief specialists from AID. There are 44 people on the teams; 22 are now in site in the countries. They are doing assessments, working with local officials, nongovernmental organizations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and local officials.
We have very good, close relationships with the disaster management agencies of the four countries that are most severely affected; in fact, AID has been working to build capacity through technical assistance programs and disaster management for some years with these countries. We know the officers well. We have been funding the Asia Disaster Preparedness Center for many years in Bangkok, which has been training these managers for an event like this, to build capacity at the national level so that they can handle their own response.
Our job, both in the United States and in other countries that are helping, is to support people in the countries themselves. It's their county. They're doing the lead in the response. Our job is to support their efforts. Several of these countries, of course, Thailand and Indonesia, have a history of natural disasters because just of their location. And as a result of that, they've been through this before -- never on this scale, never on this scale.
India, of course, is a huge country, the second largest in the world. They have a very established disaster management system and we have actually a bilateral relationship for disaster training and technical assistance with the Indian Government through AID for some years now.
See that? We've been planning and working with these countries for years. It's called preparedness. And we reacted at once to the disaster. But none of this was reported in the Old Media.
That's the real story of the $35 million, and our reaction to the disaster.
-- posted by Chuck at Saturday, January 01, 2005 | E-mail | Permalink | Main | 1 comments |
