Friday, January 14 2005 10:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Port Blair: The local wing of Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) yesterday (Jan 13, 2005) alleged that a lot of relief material, sent by its mainland centres to Andaman and Nicobar Islands after the tsunami catastrophe, were found missing at the Government godown in Port Blair.

However the local administration denied the charge saying that everything was intact but it was near impossible to keep track of the huge volume of materials received from various agencies.

IRCS (Andaman) Joint Secretary Basudev Dass alleged that a number of items sent by the aid agency's Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata centres and received by the local administration had not been handed over to their workers yet and the Government had not given any explanation as to where these items were now.

"For instance 2000 packets each of saris and dhotis are missing. We have also not received 1000 plastic buckets out of the 2000 sent. Even 1800 cotton blankets of the 2000 shipped to us have not been handed over to us," Dass said.

Of the 2000 kitchen sets, which included utensils of various kinds, 1832 had been given to the Red Cross workers. Similarly half of the 2000 towels were missing as also 850 of the 2000 bed sheets, he alleged.

However Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands Prof Ram Kapse said that he was the President of the local unit of IRCS while Chief Secretary of the union territory V V Bhatt was the local unit Chairman and as such no relief material could ever go missing.

An official in the local administration, in charge of relief materials, also said since the administration was handling a large volume of relief materials being donated by many agencies there were chances that most of the material, not received by local IRCS, would be somewhere in the Government godown.

"They will receive it if they have not. It cannot vanish from the godowns," the official, not wishing to be named, maintained.

He said that the IRCS country headquarters in New Delhi had been contacted and asked to send an official to monitor the handing over and distribution of relief materials as the local branch members have been newly elected by the Lt Governor last Monday (Jan 10, 2005).