Aid filters through to Tamil area
Borders still closed at night
(CNN) -- Aid relief is finding its way to the Tamil-controlled parts of northern Sri Lanka, but there are some obstacles for those on the ground, CNN's Stan Grant reports.
Grant talked Monday to CNN Anchor Jim Clancy about developments in some of the hardest-hit parts of Sri Lanka.
GRANT: We just heard (U.N. Secretary-General) Kofi Annan talking about the desperate need for aid to get to this side of the border. I can tell you what is happening here on the ground.
As you pointed out, the rebel Tamil Tigers control this part of northern Sri Lanka, and they are also controlling the aid relief operation through the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization.
All the aid agencies must effectively work through this organization. The organization says it has the skills -- it has honed those skills over the 20-plus years of civil war -- it knows how to rehabilitate lives, it knows how to get aid to those people.
Even just anecdotally, being around the streets here today in northern Sri Lanka, we have seen a lot more trucks coming in.
Behind me at this particular pick-up station, people are bringing boxes as they arrive here.
Now, the trucks that have been coming through here are coming from all different parts of the world. People coming from Australia, relief workers who are coming from there. Trucks that are coming from various aid agencies in Europe, also one from North Korea. Some North Korean doctors that I spoke to were arriving on the ground looking to help wherever they could. So a big international effort here is being filtered through the Tamil Tigers and their relief operation.
There are some hiccups though. Now one of the interesting factors here, though, is that this is a de facto state and you must come out of the border of southern Sri Lanka and into northern Sri Lanka.
The problem is that the border closes normally at the end of the day. It's been extended a little. We're hearing varying times -- between 8 p.m. and midnight. But certainly, the Red Cross is telling us that by midnight it closes and it doesn't really open till about 6 a.m. That's six vital hours lost when the trucks simply can't get through.
Another problem, speaking to the aid workers on the ground here, is that a lot of the aid coming through, particularly the individual aid being sent, is inappropriate or unusable. Clothes that are often tattered that have to be thrown away, medical equipment that is often out of date.
There were some syringes that had to be shifted off the site because they were 10 years out of date. Some medical equipment that is arriving from foreign countries does not come with English instructions. Many of the relief workers here need those English instructions to know what to do with it and know exactly what these goods are.
But yes, some of the aid is getting through: the basic food stuffs are coming through the shelter, the clothing, the water. It is getting in to the people on the ground, I've seen it there at the refugee camp myself, but not enough, and there are still some hiccups that need to be sorted out.
CLANCY: Are the international aid groups in charge of distributing the aid there or have the Tamil Tigers taken over and they are doing the distributing?
GRANT: They have the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, an internationally recognized aid organization. It is even recognized in southern Sri Lanka. Now what that that aid organization effectively does is act as a funnel, all the aid organizations funnel their material through that.
It works through government agencies, Sri Lankan government agencies in the south as well, so that it can expedite that process. It's working with the United Nations, working with the other aid relief organizations.
As I pointed out before, it is a recognized body, it's also a body that has vast experience. It knows where the people are. As you'll be aware, hundreds of thousands of Tamils have been displaced at various times during the civil war. Its experience at doing that sort of thing, it says, is the best way to get the aid through to the people, actually through the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization.