'Monstrous treatment' (From Penarth Times)

'Monstrous treatment'

THE family of a Penarth man missing in Thailand have slammed the government's response to the tsunami disaster and branded its treatment of families like hers as monstrous'.

Kevin McCarthy, aged 33, has been missing since Boxing Day when the tsunami struck the island of Khao Lak where he was on holiday with his girlfriend Debra Evans, aged 31.

Mr McCarthy's sister Clare Sellick, of Redlands Road, said: 'I think the way we've been treated is monstrous.

'As a family, we have received no help or information from official channels other than from the police who assigned a police liaison officer to the family.

'They have been exremely considerate and supportive but there is a limit to how much information even they can obtain.

'As a family we need to know when a death certificate will be issued so we can close this tragedy and get on with the rest of our lives.

* Continued from page one

'Nobody has been able to give us any indication of how long it will be before the missing' become fatalities, or how we obtain a death certificate.

'The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Home Office and Coroner's Office all seem to be passing the buck.

'It definitely not a question of money, but obtaining a death certificate has become a very real issue - without one my brother's bank will not freeze his account.'

'In order to get anything done ourselves, we have had to persistently nag, pressurise and sometimes swear,' Clare added.

'The stress has been unbelievable. The family could certainly have done without this in their time of grief.'

And she said her family had not been informed of a government assistance package' - including business class flights to Thailand, accommodation, death certificates etc.

'Nobody in the UK or Thailand initially knew anything about an assistance package that the government belatedly offered to help victims' families,' she said.

'We only found out about this by looking at the FCO website.

'But that is something not all families are in a position to do - my parents, as next of kin, would not have known.

One of Clare's relatives took DNA samples to Phuket and kept the samples chilled during the flight, at the hotel and up until the time they were handed over to the Consulate office in Phuket - following advice that DNA must be kept chilled.

Clare said: 'They were handed over and placed on a desk with a pile of other samples. There was no evidence they were then refrigerated.'

And Clare and her family have many questions they would like answered.

'We believe that the government has reacted too slowly and done too little to help,' she said.

'Why didn't the government send our own highly-trained search and rescue teams to Thailand immediately after the disaster happened?

'Did the government not have the will to organise a rapid response to the situation?

A spokesperson for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: 'Staff are working flat-out to assist British nationals and their relatives in this disaster, obviously in difficult circumstances but doing the best they can.

'We take complaints very seriously and aim to be as helpful as possible.

'Extra staff have been deployed to the region to help British nationals and we continue to work closely with the authorities.

'We are in contact with Mr McCarthy's family.'