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At the Cabinet of Ministers sitting of 13 May, the draft decree of the Cabinet of Ministers prepared by the Foreign Ministry On Aid Provision to the People of Burma/Myanmar for the Relief of Storm Damage was approved.
It stipulates that the Foreign Ministry will receive EUR 20,000 (LVL 14,057) from contingency funds of the Ministry of Finance to provide financial aid to the people of Burma/Myanmar for the relief of storm damage, which was caused by the tropical cyclone Nargis 08.
The money will be allocated to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which co-ordinates the UN humanitarian response to emergency situations and natural disasters.
On the evening of 2 May, a storm caused by the tropical cyclone reached the southern coast of Burma/Myanmar, the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) delta region to the south-west of the city of Yangon (Rangoon). The number of lives lost in the disaster zone, according to the latest information, total from 63,290 to 101,682 (10,000 lives in Bogalay, 80,000 in Labutta district); 220,000 people are missing. 1.2 to 1.9 million have suffered from the cyclone and millions have lost their homes. Cyclone Nargis has almost fully destroyed the infrastructure and communication networks in the most populous part of the country. New information on casualties is still being received; the number of victims may still rise. In total, about a half of the 52 million population of Burma/Myanmar has been affected by the devastation of the storm.
This is the most devastating storm in Asia since 1991, when a cyclone in Bangladesh took the lives of 143,000 people, and in view of the scale of destruction and the death toll, this is the worst natural disaster in the state in 100 years.
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