Truly too little too late? or just plain whining?

There's this guy who lives in Holland V with a blog which in general was an interesting read. I've also been reading another Singaporean father's blog as well. Recently, however, they've started on this tirade over how little how late the Singapore government and corporations are doing to help the victims of the tidal wave.

Firstly it was about the the Singapore Armed Forces medical team who is on standby to fly to Indonesia with relief supplies by Thursday to provide relief to earthquake and tidal wave victims. Here was what one of them said

Excerpt from Mr. Miyagi

Why so slow? Can't we fly our vaunted medical team there first, then help evaluate what needs to be done? Surely there'll be things to do as soon as you hit the ground, no? Maid agencies here can send sacked domestic helpers back to Indonesia faster than you can blink an eye, man! Not good enough, dudes!

I find it rather naive to think that foreign medical teams can just waltz into a country like Indonesia, start taking charge and "evaluate what needs to be done". While it takes only 2 hours to deploy the medical team to Indon, gathering neccesary supplies to help the injured takes time. Without sufficient supplies, elite medical teams are not going to be of much help. Given the general mayhem, Indonesia might not even have the resources to handle these foreigners and direct them where they are most needed any earlier than Thursday. However, I have to admit that the slowness might be a valid complaint. Afterall, if you think of it more simplistically, there are people who need help and we have people who can help, then there's no reason to delay giving the help right?

What really irked me was the complaint about local "(quasi-)corporations" not donating enough.

Another excerpt from Mr. Miyagi

Some corporations, really big ones, like Pfizer, Amazon.com, Citigroup, Cisco Systems, Bristol-Myers Squibb, have rallied in response to the tsunami disaster by donating generously.

Over here, our very own very big quasi-corporation, NTUC, 'expresses her deepest heartfelt condolences to the families of victims affected by last Sunday's tsunami that struck many parts of Asia, following the earthquake off the coast of Aceh, Sumatra.

Additionally, 5,000 food relief packages worth S$50,000 and weighing some 1.5-million tonnes have been sent to Colombo, Sri Lanka by NTUC Fairprice, which is working with Mercy Relief to raise up to S$100,000 for tsunami victims. [...]

As some Singaporeans are wont to say, very big corporations here must have very good reason for not being as generous as say, Abbott Laboratories. But you know what? Right now I just feel like telling some large local corporation they're a fcuking ntuc.

Errrm hello? the corporations he quoted as being generous make a hell of a lot more money than most of Singapore's "corporations". They are also more international. It's Pfizer (world's largest drug maker), Coca Cola, Pepsi, Cisco (!!!), etc. I don't think Singapore has a single company comparable to these giants.

Yet another excerpt:

There are a lot of people and corporations who have helped, or tried to help, even if they've been a complete moron and donated a pair of high heel shoes (I read this somewhere but I can't find the link). But [...] I am not about to pat these people on the back and say well-done, especially when they can do a whole lot more. What some of these giant local corporations (quasi-corporations included) are doing right now is akin to someone witnessing a person getting seriously hurt in a car accident and then merely leaving a packet of tissue paper for the victim.

Really? Who are you to say how much people should donate? If they don't want to or cannot afford to (which is realistic given that Singapore is still recovering from the economic downturn), these companies might need the money to grow and stay competitive. Who can really say how much another person can afford to donate and should donate? Instead of scrutinizing about whether other people are doing enough, why don't people just get out there and do something about it?

I'm personally so inundated with news of people dying that I believe I've become immuned to it all. Most people are only really concerned because the proximity to sudden death reminds them of their own mortality. A lot of the sympathy is really about "It could have been me". There's nothing really wrong with that. People are generally genuinely sympathetic but to an uninvolved person, this is yet another statistic. Another blip to the daily occurences. Life goes on.

During the Sept 11th incident, Americans got really worked up; Asians were mainly apathetic (So many people died, how sad. Next). Most people on this side of the globe who do not know anyone holidaying in the disaster struck areas are still worrying about their Christmas gift returns. This is the nature of humans. It is not that we are cold-hearted. We are all merely overloaded with information. It is not possible for a person to grieve over every single tragedy big and small. So we grieve only for the ones closest to home. Just like when we are bombarded with a multitude of sounds, our brain just shuts down and focus only on the most salient ones. This is the way humans are.

Article from Reuters

NY Times calls U.S. aid for tsunami "miserly"

NEW YORK, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The promised U.S. relief for South Asia's tsunami crisis is "miserly," and a U.N. official who criticized Western nations for not giving enough aid to the needy was "right on target," The New York Times said in an editorial on Thursday.

The senior U.N. relief official who chided wealthy Western nations for being "stingy" with their aid was not "misguided and ill informed," as President George W. Bush said on Wednesday, the newspaper wrote.

U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland made the statement in reference to general aid supplied by the wealthy countries, but later praised the rapid international response to the tsunami that hit 12 countries on Sunday.

The Times said: "We beg to differ (with Bush). Mr. Egeland was right on target."

"But the $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid.

The Times chided Bush for waiting until Wednesday to express his sympathy to leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia for Sunday's disaster that has left an estimated 120,000 people dead and millions homeless. The president announced the increase in U.S. aid to $35 million on Wednesday, saying it was "only the beginning."

The Times added that it hoped Secretary of State Colin Powell was embarrassed to announce "the initial measly aid offer" of $15 million. "That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities," in January.

Although many Americans believe the United States spends a great deal on foreign aid, the amount is less than one quarter of 1 percent of its budget, the newspaper noted. U.S. spending on development aid in 2003 was $16.2 billion, less than the $37.1 billion from the European Union.

The newspaper also urged Bush to make good on U.S. relief pledges and noted that U.S. relief for the Bam, Iran earthquake a year ago still has not been delivered.