. 24/7 Space News .
Maldives seek 1.5 billion dollars to regain paradise
  • Parisians brace for flooding risks as Seine creeps higher
  • Volcanos, earthquakes: Is the 'Ring of Fire' alight?
  • Finland's president Niinisto on course for second term
  • Record rain across soggy France keeps Seine rising
  • Record rain across sodden France keeps Seine rising
  • State of emergency as floods worry Paraguay capital
  • Panic and blame as Cape Town braces for water shut-off
  • Fresh tremors halt search ops after Japan volcano eruption
  • Cape Town now faces dry taps by April 12
  • Powerful quake hits off Alaska, but tsunami threat lifted
  • MALE (AFP) Jan 07, 2005
    Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom returned Friday from the Jakarta tsunami summit with promises of huge aid, but said this exotic tourist destination urgently needs 1.5 billion dollars in cash to regain its status as a lost paradise.

    The country had been pushed back 20 years and his was the nation least able to overcome the tsunami devastation given the small population and the vast size of the country, Gayoom told reporters.

    "The tsunamis, within a matter of minutes, destroyed much of the infrastructure built over two decades," Gayoom said, adding that 239 million dollars was needed for urgent relief and more than 1.3 billion dollars for rebuilding.

    Officials rushed to meet the president at the Hululle international airport which is on a small island that was closed for a day after the tsunami surge.

    "It was a very successful visit because the president could focus world attention to the Maldives," his spokesman Ahmed Shaheed said.

    We did not get much media exposure because deaths here were far less than in other countries."

    Eighty-two people have been reported to have died in the Maldives following the tsunamis.

    Shaheed said the livelihood of the entire nation of 330,000 people in this liberal Islamic state was also in jeopardy after infrastructure in much of the 199 inhabited coral islands was washed away.

    Given the unprecedented calamity, Gayoom was taking a hands-on interest in leading the relief and reconstruction effort, Shaheed said.

    Gayoom, 67, known as a champion against rising sea levels and a campaigner to halt global warming, said his nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 850 kilometers (550 miles) across the equator was arguably the worst hit.

    "In proportionate terms the Maldives may be the worst affected... The Maldives has been the most vulnerable to the rising sea even before the tsunami struck and the country has now become the most crippled," he said.

    The December 26 tsunami caused by an underwater earth quake measuring nine on the Richter scale left a trail of destruction, killing some 165,000 people in 11 countries in and around the Indian Ocean, with Indonesia and Sri Lanka having the biggest death tolls.

    Gayoom said 15,000 people were homeless -- about a fifth of the population.

    Civil servant Hussain Shareef at the disaster relief coordinating centre said the government had decided not to ask some 3,157 people from Kandholhudhoo island in the far flung Raa atoll to return home.

    "The entire population has moved to 11 different locations except about 100 people who have stayed back," Shareef said. "All the houses there have been flattened."

    UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who made an appeal on behalf of all the tsunami-affected nations and on Thursday helped raise over four billion dollars in pledges, is due here Sunday to assess the damage.

    Officials said Annan will be shown the Kolhufushi island, about an hour's flying from here, which was evacuated because all its structures were washed out.

    "We are getting some temporary shelters and toilets put in and the Secretary General will see for himself the level of destruction," Shareef said.

    In the capital island, there is hardly any sign of the tsunami destruction except the water marks on some walls, while some washed out sand-bags could be seen on the edge of the airport island.

    Shop manager Ahmed Jaleel said two of the 11 boutiques he maintains in resorts were badly damaged. In one shop at the Vilureef resort, he lost about 50,000 dollars worth of merchandise.

    "We haven't started counting the losses in the second shop," he said, adding that he was keen to clean up the stores as tourists were slowly returning to what is regarded South Asia's most expensive destination.




    All rights reserved. copyright 2018 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.