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Below is the transcript of a telephone interview that took place on 5th January 2005 with BBC News 24.
Due to copyright, we are not permitted to show you the footage.
Our next caller is on the island of Phuket in Thailand, which was of course very badly affected by the disaster. Eduardo Loigorri is on the line.
Eduardo, just bring us up to date on what it is like over there at the moment.
Good afternoon Robin, there are two points that I would really like to bring across, one is an update on the current relief effort and the second really is the longer term damage the media's portrayal of Phuket is making to that effort.
I was actually part of a private convoy today, I have just returned delivering aid to the worst affected area called Khao Lak and it was devastated, the scenes there are something from a holocaust, it's quite unbelievable the damage that's been wrecked there and I think the relief situation on the ground has moved on, the basic life support systems are in place now, what the people there want are things like cooking utensils, cooking oil and the staples to make them stand on their own two feet. I spoke to the local mayor in the region about what sort of further assistance we could give, his comment interestingly was, "do not send money here, do not send more food and clothes, what we need are the basics to allow our people to get back to work, we need fishing boats, we need nets", most of the fishing villages have been decimated along that coast.
Let me just ask you one specific question, you talk about aid and so on, but who actually is providing that aid, is it coming from the major organisations, is it coming from local groups or individuals, who is actually doing it?
It's a mixture of all of those, local government has probably been most responsible for co-ordinating things but a lot of private donations and private initiatives have taken place, one of the problems that we had here was an overwhelming response from the local population to provide but no distribution or transportation resources, so a lot of people have privately taken trucks, buses and whatever they can get hold of to take aid up there.
But one of the most distressing things for me here is the medias portrayal of Phuket as a disaster area is not representative of what's happening here on the ground and the real long term problem here is that Phuket is an economy which depends upon tourism, there is no welfare structure like we have in Europe and the people that have lost a lot depend upon their relatives and friends who need to work. Now if you take Phuket as an island, it's a big island and only about 1% has been affected by this disaster, that's not to undermine what has happened here, but it's not on the scale of Sri Lanka, Indonesia or India and yet I would say that most people's perception is that Phuket is a complete disaster area and this is not the case. And while that continues to be propagated it will cause long term damage here to that recovery.
Eduardo thanks very much indeed for that, most grateful.
© Thai Tsunami Long Tail 2005
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