Vocal Voices

£5m and two aircraft with relief supplies is NOT enough!

Nearly 5,000 have died and the number could reach 10,000. Eight million people are living in the open because their homes have been destroyed or they are too afraid to go back into their ramshackle houses. DEC has opened an appeal and you just know the British will donate and keep donating, but our government should be doing so much more to help one of the most peaceful nations on Earth.

Sending 15 Gurkahs home to help their countrymen and also sending a few search and rescue teams does not cut it. We need to get real aid out there and we need to do it NOW.

Workingman wrote:£5m and two aircraft with relief supplies is NOT enough!

Nearly 5,000 have died and the number could reach 10,000. Eight million people are living in the open because their homes have been destroyed or they are too afraid to go back into their ramshackle houses. DEC has opened an appeal and you just know the British will donate and keep donating, but our government should be doing so much more to help one of the most peaceful nations on Earth.

Sending 15 Gurkahs home to help their countrymen and also sending a few search and rescue teams does not cut it. We need to get real aid out there and we need to do it NOW.

I could not agree more. Agonising to think what the nation is going through.

I am convinced that our government's behaviour is largely down to the fact that is knows when an appeal is launched we, the public, will give generously, as we always do. We did it with Haiti and the tsunami and many other natural disasters, and we will keep on doing it to the point where we embarrass the government into opening its wallet.

I will be giving a donation to a charity which supplies Aquaboxes. There is a web site which gives details.
I know thw boxes could be stolen, but they are not the same as money and provide safe drinking water.
I will not donate to government relief funds or other charities. There are still parts of Haiti which have still not had any aid money to get things back to normal.

I understand that, Cruiser, the issue of money with these appeals irks me no end, but many, many people will give, and rightly so.

I prefer to seek out organisations that buy in things like tents, sleeping bags, cooking equipment, water purification etc. and then ship them out to the disaster zone.