TRO Provides Relief To Tsunami Victims: Urgent Need for Nurses

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 December 2004, 11:20 GMT]
Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), a non-governmental organization from Sri Lanka, has fully geared its administrative machinery to provide relief assistance to victims of all communities - Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese - in the northeast province. Nearly twenty thousand died and about five hundred thousand were displaced in Sunday's tsunami.

TRO has allocated 12 million rupees for the immediate relief provision to the region and deployed more than three hundred volunteers to provide assistance to the victims. Tsunami has taken its death toll with TRO too; they lost seven of its 84 volunteers in Trincomalee district. They were deployed for relief work during flood in the Eachchilampathu division.

“TRO has dispatched 18 trucks with relief materials from Colombo to North East since the devastation struck the island,” said on Wednesday Mr. C. Pararajasingham who works for the TRO Colombo office.

Three trucks fully packed with relief materials were sent to Batticaloa, four to Amparai district, four to Trincomalee, three to Vadamardchi East, and three to Mullaitivu. In Matakulia trucks were loaded with rice, dhal, sugar, salt, chick peas, milk powder, biscuits, candles, mats, clothes, baby feeding bottles, cups, plates and bags, and more.

TRO has to transport goods by boat in Amparai as access routes remain blocked. Roads and bridges are damaged and tractors have to be used to transport aid to the affected regions. Now the next task for TRO is to find nurses to accompany doctors in the field.

Help also comes from abroad. In Lancaster, California, a group of doctors - Tamil expatriates raised over USD 150 000 to buy supplies. One from the group was at the time of disaster in Colombo and he could buy medicines for USD 80 000 to fill ten trucks that were sent later to the northeast region through TRO.