Red Cross Criticized Over Slow Response to Floods

With thousands of families evacuated from their homes due to flooding, the Cambodian Red Cross (CRC), the largest and best-funded humanitarian organization in the country, has yet to provide flood aid to many struggling communities, local officials said Monday. Families living in some of the worst hit areas said they are still waiting for the CRC to make an appearance while foreign aid groups such as Caritas and Ox­fam have delivered supplies of water and rice to the displaced. … Kong Yen, chief of the CRC branch in Kompong Cham prov­ince, where thousands have been evacuated to higher ground, said he had not yet assisted any flood victims in the area due to the recent Pchum Ben religious festival. “We are not working during Pchum Ben because we are on holiday,” he said, adding that he had submitted a letter to the CRC’s headquarters in Phnom Penh asking for assistance more than a week ago. “We submitted a letter to the CRC [headquarters] to ask for donations to help the flood victims, but the organization has not yet responded to our request.” Mr. Yen added that his office had prepared 40 tons of rice, but has not yet distributed it to flood victims as he was not sure where to take the donations. The CRC, which has branches in every province in the country and is supported by millions of dollars in donations annually, is presided over by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s wife, Bun Rany. … According to [CRC deputy director] Ms. [Men] Neary Sophea, the CRC has helped evacuate 13,000 families nationwide and had directly provided supplies to 8,902 families. “We helped them with food, especially rice and to some we gave shelter,” she said. … “We cannot be everywhere and we do not have magic eyes to see where people need help,” she said, adding that the CRC does not coordinate with the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) at such times. “I do not work with them [NCDM], I don’t know what they do. We do not need the NCDM to tell us, we have our own line of management and people can come to us directly. Every morning and evening we collect the information from our branches,” she said. … Ms. Neary Sophea, the CRC’s deputy director, declined to say how much money had been allocated to respond to the current flood relief effort, though she said the CRC’s annual budget was between $3 to $5 million. In May, the CRC raised $14 million from donations in a single day. Caritas Cambodia, which started to distribute donations to thousands of affected families last week, said that they had not interacted with the CRC on the organization’s distribution of emergency kits to some 3,000 families. …

Aun Pheap and Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/red-cross-criticized-over-slow-response-to-floods-44560/