India: Thanks but now please leave, Andamans beg tsunami aid brigade

PORT BLAIR, India, Jan 5 (AFP) - A surge in job-seekers sailing to the Andamans for a slice of the post-tsunami aid pie could alter the archipelago's demography and further squeeze its indigenous peoples, experts warn. Environmentalists are also urging large relief agencies to pack up and leave the palm-fringed Andamans, arguing they are doing more harm than good to the islanders, thousands of whom lost their homes in the December 26, 2004 tsunami. "An even bigger problem is the (presence) of the NGOs (non-government organisations), who are spoiling the work culture," said Samir Achorya, founder of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, a social action forum. "Aid workers who were paid 4,000 rupees (93 dollars) a month are now drawing four times more, with washing machines and mobile phones thrown in as perks. "It'll be difficult for them to scale down their lifestyles once the post-tsunami reconstruction is over," Achorya warned in the capital Port Blair, headquarters to 62 international or large domestic NGOs. Agencies such as UNICEF, Oxfam, Caritas, Action Aid and Save the Children have hired scores of locals for projects ranging from health to reconstruction and education, and farming projects employ thousands more. Achorya called for urgent remedial measures in the Andamans, which boasts India's third highest literacy rate after Kerala and Mizoram states. "The Andamans lost 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) of rice fields, and huge land tracts are now under the sea," he said. "If this (immigrant) population grows, the aborigines will be further marginalised ... they'll run deeper into the forests." Five Stone Age tribes -- 398 Shompens, 350 Jarawas, 99 Onges, 100 Sentinelese and just 51 Great Andamanese --- live in the archipelago's forests, eight percent of which has already been encroached upon by settlers from the Indian mainland. Click here for full story SOURCE: Reliefweb

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