Water scarcity hits Myanmar

Yangon: Residents of Myanmar's biggest city lit up their homes with candles, lined up to buy water and hacked their way through uprooted trees in the aftermath of a cyclone that left thousands dead and homeless.

The military regime has indicated that a referendum on the country's draft constitution would proceed as planned on Saturday despite the havoc wreaked by tropical cyclone Nargis across wide swaths of the country on Saturday.

The Foreign Ministry called resident ambassadors to a meeting on Monday and some diplomats said they expected the government to request foreign emergency assistance.

Some in Yangon complained that the 400,000-strong military was doing little to help victims.

UN assessment

A United Nations official said hundreds of thousands had been left without shelter and drinking water in the Irrawaddy delta region.

"We know that it's several hundred thousand needing shelter and clean drinking water, but how many hundred thousand we just don't know," said Richard Horsey, of the United Nations disaster response office in Bangkok.

The storm swept across the river delta and into Yangon, devastating the nation's economic hub just days before a vote on a constitutional referendum, the first polling in military-ruled Myanmar since 1990.

But voting was the last thing on the minds of Yangon residents, who have been without water for three days now.

"Water is our basic need. We don't have any water now. If it continues like this, I can't imagine what we will do. My family hasn't taken bath for three days, because we are saving the water we have stored," said Aung, a 60-year-old man who goes by one name.

"I want the authorities to do more for the people. The whole city was damaged. People need many things now," he said.

The Myanmar government had a provisional death toll of 10,000, with 3,000 others missing, a diplomat said after a briefing from Foreign Minister Nyan Win.

State media said 70 per cent of trees were felled in Yangon. The cardiac ward and cancer unit at Yangon General Hospital had been utterly destroyed.

An information ministry official said authorities were delivering aid, but demand was enormous.

"Thousands of people are homeless now, just in Yangon. We are still trying to figure out the number of homeless and the injured," he said.

Many were left with nothing after the storm.

"My house is destroyed. I can't imagine how we are going to rebuild our house," said The Mar, a 34-year-old housewife who sought shelter in a temple.

"My family ran to this pagoda when my house collapsed during the storm. I don't know how to face this kind of disaster," she said.

A 60-year-old man at the makeshift shelter said he was in downtown Yangon when Nargis struck.

"I had to walk back to my home as the storm raged because I worried for my family. Roofs flew over my head and I had to hide behind a building," he said, asking not to be identified.

"It was so scary. I arrived home safely after four hours of walking. But when I got there, my house was half destroyed," he said.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Last September, at least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained when the military cracked down on peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.

"It is not likely that the devastation caused by the cyclone will lead directly to further street protests. This is because there is now a major hunt on by residents of Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta for clean water, candles, and basic foodstuffs," said Monique Skidmore, a Myanmar expert at Australian National University.

"Given the increasing commodity prices in Burma, and the overwhelming anger of the population against their enforced poverty, Burmese people are going about the process of burying their dead and trying to reconstruct their homes," she said.