Caritas Mayanmar hands over Nargis cyclone relief operations to locals
(January 22, 2011) Caritas Myanmar, the Catholic Church’s social arm in the south
Asian nation has ended three years of emergency relief services following the devastating
Nargis cyclone of 2008 and handed over responsibility to local villagers. Caritas
Myanmar, known as Karuna Social Service, staged the handover to the Village Development
Recovery Committee (VDRC) at a special two-day ceremony held at the Sacred Heart Minor
seminary compound in Mayanchaung, Pathein diocese. The responsibility for continued
recovery efforts in Nargis affected areas are now in the hands of local villagers.
About 100 VDRC members from 21 villages in the Irrawaddy Delta attended the “evaluation
and handover” gathering, Thursday and Friday. Father Henry Eikhlein, director of
Karuna in Pathein diocese (KPSS), described the gathering as a meeting of family members
and to hand over Karuna’s tasks to the villagers thereby ending one chapter and starting
another. Raymond Soe Lay, a KPSS livelihood project worker noted that the villagers
were able to draw up development programs with them during the two day programme.
Bishop John Hsane Hgyi of Pathein observed it is good to be self-reliant and free
from depending on others. It is time for the villagers to take responsibility and
work for the development of their own villages, he said. More than 140,000 people
were feared dead and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed when Cyclone Nargis
struck the delta in May 2008.