Aid groups and government officials are concerned that orphans are being split among relatives more eager to obtain money promised for tsunami survivors than to care for the children.
Jayashree, just 3 years old, like thousands of other children across Asia, lost her parents in the tsunami.
Now she has been separated from her siblings by a grandmother who picked her up from a relief camp in Nagapattinam, the worst-hit district on the Indian mainland with 5,500 deaths.
Dressed in a crumpled pink dress that she found among a pile of used clothes from nearby Akkrapattai fishing hamlet, Jayashree pines continually for her sister Nithya, 6, and brother Gunasekaran, 10.
Her maternal grandmother appears patient when visitors are around but snarls at the child when she thinks no-one is watching.
The paternal grandmother picked up Nithya and Guna.
Both grandmothers stand to collect 100,000 rupees (US$2,272 dollars) promised by the state and another 100,000 rupees pledged by the federal government as the nearest relatives.
The government money is, however, intended to go into fixed deposits for an orphaned child to access when he or she reaches the age of 18.
Jayashree said sadly that her parents have gone "kizhakku poyirukkaanga" -- gone east, which in her village of some 5,000 fishing families means going to the beach to trade fish.
Jayashree's story is repeated almost in every relief center across the Tamil Nadu shoreline.
One UNICEF official said a man, who turned up claiming to be an uncle of an orphaned boy turned out to be a fraud after the child refused to go with him.
"Obviously, these orphans are precious to their relatives and even others not related, for the money relief offered by the government," said S. Vidyaakar, founder-director of Madras-based `Udhavum Karangal' (Helping Hands), a volunteer institution,
The organization, which cares for destitute children, old people and the terminally ill, placed an advertisement in the newspapers offering to take tsunami orphans into care. It received not a single response.
Vidyaakar, however, fears his time will come sooner than later, when the relatives grab the relief money and then dump the orphans on the road.
"Then we will step in and take care of those unfortunate ones," he said.
Started in 1982, Udhavum Karangal provides care for about 2,000 people, almost 500 of them children.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
‘DIGNITY’: The Ukrainian president said that ‘we did not not betray Ukraine then, we will not do so now,’ amid US pressure to give significant concessions to Russia Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pushed back against a US plan to end the war in Ukraine, while Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the proposal that includes many of his hardline demands. With US President Donald Trump giving Ukraine less than a week to sign, Zelenskiy pledged to work to ensure any deal would not “betray” Ukraine’s interests, while acknowledging he risked losing Washington as an ally. Putin said the blueprint could “lay the foundation” for a final peace settlement, but threatened more land seizures if Ukraine walked away from negotiations. Ukraine faces one of the most challenging moments in its history,
RSS