SINGAPORE: ‘Lucky’ Island Leads Regional Tsunami Relief Efforts

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kalinga Seneviratne

SINGAPORE, Jan 1 2005 (IPS) - Tan Geok Huay, a 51-year-old housekeeper was one of the nearly 3,000 people who showed up at Singapore’s Red Cross office with their cheque books, bank tills and other valuables soon after last weekend’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake, and devastating tsunamis, struck – killing over 124,000 people in 11 countries.

When a reporter asked her why she was queuing outside the Red Cross, she broke down and related how her son had rung her from Thailand, the day before, and said he was safe.

”Even though my son called home to say he was okay, I feel extremely sad because so many died,” said the sobbing mother of four.

On Saturday, the confirmed death toll in Thailand was 4,812 – including 2,407 foreign holidaymakers. About 6,541 people are still missing.

Tan’s display of generosity is a typical example of how the tsunami disaster has deeply touched the hearts of most Singaporeans.

They have rallied to donate over five million Singapore dollars (3.06 million U.S. dollars) so far, while the government has given another five million Singapore dollars in cash and over 25 million Singapore dollars (15.32 million U.S. dollars) in kind assistance to the effected countries along the Indian Ocean.

This has been billed as the tiny republic’s biggest disaster relief effort in history.

Singapore is one of the richest countries in South-East Asia and escaped damage from the tsunami disaster.

Nonetheless, the places completely run over by the tsunami waves are popular haunts for Singaporeans. At least seven Singapore nationals have been confirmed dead, with 18 missing and another 227 unaccounted for so far.

The spirit of showing compassion even dawned upon Singapore’s tourism authorities on New Year’s Eve, which appealed to event organisers to tone down their countdown parties.

Most organisers noted the advice and the Esplanade Arts Centre cancelled a 160,000 Singapore dollar (98,051 U.S. dollar) fireworks display at midnight. MediaCorp’s Channel Five television also followed suit and did away with its planned live broadcast of a beach party countdown.

Even the National Trade Union Council, which spent 350,000 Singapore dollars (214,487 U.S. dollars) on its New Year’s Eve party, toned down celebrations considerably. The trade union asked its 40,000 guests to donate two Singapore dollars (1.22 U.S. dollars) each to a disaster relief fund and pledged to match the donations on a dollar-to-dollar basis.

When it was midnight, most New Year Eve parties on the island came to a complete standstill with revelers observing a minute’s silence for those killed in the worst natural disaster the world has seen in 40 years.

When asked about the cost of cancelling the fireworks display, Esplanade’s CEO Benson Puah told ‘Today’ newspaper that ”everything we do as a society cannot always be calculated in dollar terms.”

Reflecting on how lucky the country has been, Mickey Chiang – a letter writer to the ‘Straits Times’ newspaper – said: ”We in Singapore also need to realise that we have been miraculously spared from this disaster.”

Chiang noted that if the epicenter of the massive earthquake was just a few score kilometers to the east, the tsunami waves might have come crashing through the narrow Malacca Straits – gathering force as it headed towards Singapore.

The island-state, he said, would have been completely destroyed as well as numerous other heavily populated islands surrounding Singapore.

Many of the country’s foreign domestic workers as well unskilled labourers, numbering close to 250,000, come from areas hit by the weekend tsunamis.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during a press conference on Thursday even hinted that Singapore might consider a reverse flow of labour to help rebuild the shattered communities. In a somber mood, he appealed to local youth brigades to organise ”expedition projects” to neighbouring countries in the coming months to help rebuild communities that have been shattered.

Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam asked heads of schools, which reopen for the new academic year on Monday, to encourage their students to initiate disaster relief programmes for the region.

He suggested that one way students could contribute was to help in recovery and rebuilding efforts in the effected countries as part of their school’s Community Involvement Programme, under which some of the richer schools send their senior students to poorer communities across the region to help build community facilities.

The situation presents a ”real life experience” from which students can pick up ”valuable life lessons” and develop a compassionate spirit, he said.

Meanwhile, close to 700 personnel of the Singapore Armed Forces and Singapore Civil Defence Force have mounted their biggest peacetime operation in the region to help Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka in relief operations.

Singapore has also opened its naval and air bases to other richer countries such as Australia, France, Japan and the United States, as staging posts to transport supplies to Indonesia. This is to ease the current congestion at airport facilities in northern Sumatra, which are inadequate to cope with the catastrophe.

Northern Sumatra has been worst hit by the weekend quake and tsunami disaster, with authorities there estimating that more than 100,000 residents may have been killed.

Many Buddhist temples have also mounted aid campaigns with the Singapore Buddhist Federation donating 500,000 Singapore dollars (306,410 U.S. dollars) to the Red Cross.

A spokesperson for the Sri Lankarama Buddhist temple told IPS that offers of help have been overwhelming with their phone lines ringing non-stop since Monday.

In response to a question from a journalist about the official cost to the country of the relief operation, Prime Minister Lee said: ”We’ve never done anything on this scale before…but cost is not the thing. The thing is the effort to be of a direct help.”