Sydney Morning Herald, November 26, 2005
By Christopher Kremmer in Islamabad
JOHN Howard made a beeline this week for Australian troops on duty helping earthquake survivors in Pakistan. But for another group of Australians working in the area, there were no pictures, and so far not a cent in government aid.
The volunteers of the small non-profit organisation Australian Aid International know what it is like to give until it hurts. Their credit card balances are wearing thin and some of them are odds-on to lose their jobs when they return to Australia. Still, they're hanging in there as the Himalayan winter approaches.
They reached the quake zone five weeks earlier, and are working at higher elevations than the 162-strong Australian military medical teams, which got $20 million from Canberra to set up and stay for three months.
This week, AAI's application for funding to stay on through the winter to build basic shelters for some of the 3.5 million people made homeless by the quake was turned down by AusAid, the official overseas help provider, despite Mr Howard releasing an extra $10 million for emergency relief this week.
"I can't understand it," said the group's co-founder, Melbourne-based Frank Tyler. "We've had doctors paying their own airfares, Victoria Police officers who are in trouble with their bosses for coming here, yet our own Government won't help."
A veteran of humanitarian aid work, Mr Tyler had been on the doomed Sea King helicopter before it crashed during the tsunami relief operation on Nias Island, killing 11 people. He had hopped off a few hours earlier. Now he and his fellow volunteers are working feverishly in the remote village of Lasdana, 2740 metres above sea level, before those left homeless freeze to death.
Individuals and companies have assisted. But it looks like Norway's Government will help before the Australian Government does, after a United Nations committee recommended them to Oslo.
"This is without doubt the most difficult relief challenge there has ever been," says Andrew MacLeod, the Australian who heads the UN Emergency Co-ordination Centre in Islamabad. "The tsunami had more fatalities but if you add deaths and injuries together the numbers are about the same. The geographic area devastated is larger, the terrain is mountainous instead of flat coastal areas, and now the snow is falling.
"Australian Aid International is a small piece of the overall jigsaw, but I think what they're doing is good, and typically Australian - here's a problem, let's see what we can do to fit in and fix it without duplication or treading on anyone's toes. They use money effectively, but some aid bureaucrats could consider them to be mavericks."
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