上個星期五吹襲緬甸既颱風，已經做成22,500人死 ，41,054人失蹤，100萬災民無家可歸 。
災情可能會比三年前南亞大海嘯 更嚴重。
有人用一九九一年孟加拉既颱風來比喻今次既災難，上次孟加拉既風災足足引致143,000人死亡。Dr Yunus在佢既新書形容一九九一年既風災係災難性，亦引起Grameen Bank一連串既改革，務求更有效地扶貧。
孟加拉有Grameen Bank，咁緬甸呢？只有一個亳無血性、見死不救既軍政府，雖然風暴已經令到屍橫遍野，仍然不聞不問。
依家，緬甸既災民活在水深火熱之，有多個組織都正在籌款，請慷慨解囊：
聯合國兒童基金會
宣明會 （宣明會捐贈運用）
5 則留言:
佢地呢舖真係甘。。。雖然9=/=8，但係不竟感覺就係對比起呢d大型災難，好多咩愛國，言論自由，xyz，近期既紛爭話題，突然顯得好渺少。。。
又會諗，如果香港食一鑊咁既災難，會點？
PK_哥哥：我諗我明你講乜，我自己呢，就覺得注意力同精神係有限既，我會揀議題來關心。如果對扶貧有興趣，可以睇下依本書：http://www.anobii.com/books/01e9dbcae8b54cb451/
好多事實令人震驚，我之前寫過D summary:
o Shocking Truth
o Aid:
- Aid can be divided into 3 catagories - Charity (Oxfam, CARE), National (aid from government) and International (World Bank, IMF, UN). African countires recieve aid in dollar amount of as below:
Charity 10%
National 60%
International 30
Aid:
- Aid can be divided into 3 categories - Charity (Oxfam, CARE), National (aid from government) and International (World Bank, IMF, UN). African countries receive aid in dollar amount of as below:
Charity 10%
National 60%
International 30%
- What a huge band of aid everywhere, and what a poor coordination, duplication of program and resources it makes! Every NGO, every government and every international organization need their own people there, getting reports from the African officials, and doing more or less duplicated projects and job. How can you get anything done in such a noisy environment? Just to submit all the quarterly reports are good enough to use up all your time, not to mention spending efforts in really improve your poor countrymen’s livings.
- In average, an African country need to submit 10,000quaterly reports to donors each year and hosts more than 1000 missions. Any companies that allow this kind of duplication and bureaucracy should have been bankrupted ages ago.
- Expatriates and consultants are extremely expensive. If any organizations insist to have very corruption-proof control, they have to send a lot of expatriates there and buy a lot of consultant's time. The results? 70% of US government aid was spent on S consultants and materials; and totally 47% of US aid spending in total goes on consultants. That means nearly half of US aid never get anywhere close to Africa. Half of it goes to paycheck of consultant, many of them Americans.
- Do we really need scattered, small scales "projects" to help a village or two? There is established bureaucracy there in every African countries, and they badly need money. Poverty trap is a very deep hole to climb out. If we always hold back the money, in fear of corruption, do you think this kind of duplicated projects, mission, reports and hundreds of thousands of expatriates and consultant will help African countries to gain ownership and grow? Why don't we give money to the African government with clear rules and also close monitoring and follow-up to make sure the money is spent in the right place efficiently through governmental channel? Also, being an ignorant outsider, shouldn't the donors to allow the African government to prioritize and decide on how and where to spend the money? This is also an empowering process too, where African countries will be able to learn and grow from these self-help initiatives.
- Food Aid: US is one of the largest food donor for urgent relief, to stop people (mostly African) from starvation. The best approach is, of course, to buy food from nearby country / area and send to the affected area. This is quick and cheap and also promotes local economies. US, however, provide food grown from US only. That means it takes four month to reach the famine location. So, US has to make wild guess on how much food is needed 4 month in advance, making huge waste in peaceful time, and far less than enough in bad season. Worse still, it only benefis the US farmer... and guess who? US Shipping companies. The big food providesr like Cargill typically charge 11% higher price than in open food market. The shipping companies US are guaranteed by law to get to transport at least 75 per cent of the food. A calculation is that between 2000 and 2002, nearly 40% of food aid money actually gone to US shipping firms. I will be totally pissed off if I am a US tax payer. What a shameful interest transfer!
Trade:
- Sugar: EU passed law that if you want to sell sugar, you have to buy the sugar grown in EU, at a fixed price. This fixed price is three times higher than the world price. EU also has a quota that they guarantee to buy from sugar farmer, which is a lot higher than what European can consume. The results? Of course, DUMPING! EU tax payers are called on to provide extra "export" subsidies that are sufficiently large to make the sugar competitive on global markets. The net effect is that a lot of sugar cane are grown in the cold Europe, while putting African farmer with a much suitable climate for sugar cane out of business.
- Coffee. Do you know where was coffee first found? Kaffa, Ethiopia. Africa grow great coffee and they are supposed to earn some good money so that they can support their families? Totally wrong. It is the processing of coffee that create most of the value, not the coffee bean itself. Coffee producing countries receives only 8% of the global coffee retail sales (only USD 5.5 billion in a total of total $70 billion sales). So, why don't the factories move their coffee processing to Africa to enjoy the cheap cost? Well, because historically tariffs on process coffee products were significantly higher than on raw coffee beans. Although the poorest 37 countries in the world are now granted tariff-free access to European market, it is very difficult to shift this long-established reality. The results? Countries like Germany remains the word's forth largest exporter of coffee, despite not growing a bean.
- Bitter chocolate: Cocoa is not much better. Let's see this. Japn has been and still imposing high cocoa tariff: 0% on cocoa beans, 5% on cocoa paste, 10% on defatted cocoa paste, 13% on cocoa powder, and 280% on finished chocolate!!! Until recently, Europe and America applied something similar. No wonder countries like Belgium and Switzerland have such well-developed chocolate industries. So, these black African still doing the hard and cheap labor of growing cocoa, while never able to reap the true profit generated from processing cocoa.
BTW, 緬甸心民唔係因為風災死既,佢地係窮死+比軍政府害死。
天災未能免,
人禍減不掉...
有一些國家或地區特別易受自然傷害...
苦心經營一瞬間給摧毀...
再碰上高壓政府...
真係苦過dee dee...
indeed. tks a lot.
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