Death toll rises in West Timor floods
24 May -- As the United Nations and other relief organizations continued to evacuate people from flood-affected areas in West Timor, more victims lost their lives in the past 24 hours, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) reported today from Dili.
TThe UN mission said in a statement that three people reportedly drowned near a bridge in the Melaka Tengah District yesterday, bringing the death toll to 127. UNTAET also said that a total of 37 people had been reported missing.
Meanwhile, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), about 20,000 people were in need of food assistance and a total of 57,000 persons were directly affected by the flooding. So far 5,247 people had been evacuated to 17 different sites in West Timor's Betun region.
In more positive news from the island, Jean-Christian Cady, the official in charge of Governance and Public Administration within the UN mission in East Timor, has told a meeting of donors in Australia that over 24,000 East Timorese were employed by UNTAET, UN agencies, NGOs and the private sector - most of them in labour-intensive projects funded with multilateral or bilateral support.
Visiting Australia to lay the groundwork for a donor conference in Lisbon next month, the UN official told the representatives of Australia and other donor countries that private foreign investment would come to East Timor when two criteria were met - public security and security of land tenure. He stressed that public security had been basically achieved, but that land tenure remained a challenge.
Mr. Cady also made it clear that the UN was working for the East Timorese people, who must share a sense of participation in the decision-making since they would, before long, be in charge.
