By Aung Myo
May 10 2011 (IPS)

Summer brings with it the search for better access to drinking water, especially in the Irrawaddy Delta of Myanmar that was hit by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. More than 5,000 ponds and 3,000 hand-dug wells in the delta area, the usual sources of water for local communities, were also destroyed by Nargis.

While the United Nations standard for drinking water per person per day is a minimum of three litres, only 35 percent of households of cyclone-affected areas of the delta meet this requirement, according to statistics of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) Tripartite Core Group. Many local residents still rely also on springs, creeks and rivers for drinking water, regardless of the quality of that water.

By Aung Myo
Apr 19 2011 (IPS)

The onset of May brings with it the memory of the destruction brought by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, but also still ongoing efforts to put the pieces of life back together again. These efforts include reconstructing and building schools, since about 4,000 of them were totally or partially damaged by the killer cyclone that struck on May 3, 2008, according to the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment report done by the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN).

For some time after the disaster, students were writing on floors or studying in the heat. The reconstruction and rehabilitation work is far from finished and many young people need to work to help their families, but local communities have welcomed the newly built schools.

Nargis, which hit the Irrawaddy delta the hardest, killed more than 84,000 people and affected 2,4 million out of the 7.35 million people living in the affected townships.