BRITAIN’S leading charities have banked twice as much money from last year’s tsunami appeal as they have spent so far in those countries ravaged by the waves. The public donated a record £372 million, but at the last count the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has spent only £128 million.

Aid workers explain that the overwhelming public response presented them with a challenge almost as daunting as coping with the world’s biggest relief operation. Beverley Cohen, of the DEC, which embraces a dozen of Britain’s best-known aid agencies, said: “Cash was coming in faster than we could spend it. We would have loved to have housed everybody by now, and have every child back in school, but this was never going to be a quick fix.”

“I’m sure donors would be angry with us if we had just thrown all that money at countries who couldn’t deal with it.”

Unwanted piles of clothes still sit rotting in the rain in a Thai fishing village; tin-roofed temporary shacks for refugees were too hot for anyone to live in; water tanks leaked; new boats were not seaworthy; and some medical supplies were out of date, but aid agencies insist that their successes outweigh the errors.

The DEC has spent £40 million on projects in both Indonesia and Sri Lanka, another £31 million in India, and £17 million has been split between four other countries, including Thailand. It plans to spend a further £190 million in the coming year, mainly building 20,000 new homes for 100,000 people. Experts say that constructing all the houses needed is the equivalent of building Glasgow and Birmingham from scratch in less than 12 months.

Ms Cohen said: “Progress has been impressive. A year after Hurricane Ivan in Florida, hundreds of people are still in temporary accommodation. It took the Japanese seven years to repair the damage done by the Kobe earthquake. The tsunami caused far greater destruction. The public’s expectations were raised after such a remarkable fund-raising operation, and that brings its own pressures for us. The last thing we want is the accusation that we didn’t spend this cash properly.”

The promise a year ago was that the world would pull together to ensure that red tape, corruption and political rivalries did not impede efforts to meet the needs of survivors, the bereaved and the dispossessed.

The operation has been slowed by rows over land rights, renewed tensions with rebel fighters in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and the need for refugees who have lost everything to somehow prove that they own the scrap of land where their houses once stood. The planning regulations of countries such as Indonesia, bans on importing building products and ensuring that materials bought locally do not deplete natural resources have also impeded progress.

Britain’s charities say that the answer is to spread their spending over the next three years. Tony Thompson, Head of UK Emergency Response for the Red Cross, said: “We want to make sure the public’s money is spent properly.”

Charity Commission rules say that funds raised for tsunami relief can be spent only on those Indian Ocean countries pummelled by the waves on Boxing Day last year.

International governments pledged an unprecedented $11 billion to the aid effort. Almost all countries have paid their dues and the United Nations has collected more than $7 billion. Progress has been impressive in many areas, but this week the UN and the European Union issued reports saying that too many people remained homeless a year on to call the recovery operation a major success.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Union External Relations Commissioner, condemned the rebuilding effort as too slow and said that far too many survivors were still living in dire conditions. Co-ordination between governments, aid agencies and recipients of aid had to be improved so more money was not wasted.

Hafiz A. Pasha, the UN Development Programme’s operations director for the region, said that tighter checks were needed on spending. Sri Lanka had been advised to start disbursing the near $2 billion pledged to the island, though the authorities there blamed an increase in violence by Tamil Tiger fighters for hampering their relief efforts.

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