The catastrophic tsunami of two weeks ago, the high death toll it had claimed and the devastation it had wrecked has seen the emergence of an unprecedented wave of caring, charity and togetherness in our country.

Race and religion have been transcended and in the local newspapers, we read heart-warming tales of young children emptying money-boxes, of prisoners donating their money even from behind bars, of winners giving back prizes, and of a fresh retiree giving a portion of her EPF money ... all to help the hard-hit victims.

Up until last Friday, the social service arm of the Catholic church, the Penang Office for Human Development (POHD), which has been co-ordinating aid for victims in Tanjung Bunga, Aceh and Sri Lanka, met with overwhelming goodwill, charity from people who gave generously from the pocket and of themselves.

Every day, the ground floor of 290, Jalan Macalister is a hive of activity from 9am (right up to midnight at times) with truckloads and containers buzzing in and out and our pool of dedicated volunteers carrying, shifting, packing and sorting the foodstuff, medical supplies, clothes and basic necessities.

Late last week, after an excruciating 22-hour journey because of the overtaxed airports of Medan and Banda Aceh, the director of POHD finally arrived at the hardest hit zone of Banda Acheh. He found conditions worse than depicted on television news.

All along, we had been sending out word that high on our list of desired items was milk powder for young children. But the director found that in most make-shift relief centres, there was insufficient supply of even drinking water, and the capability to boil water was almost non-existent.

As such, back in Penang, time was short as our shipment was to leave early this week. We sourced for tetrapacked soya bean milk and after negotiations, made the difficult decision to use RM24,000 from our pool of donations to purchase 2,000 cartons of soya bean milk at RM12 a carton of 24 boxes.

In our mind's eye, we saw 48,000 hungry children and perhaps even adults, gladly receiving this much-needed nutrition. If we had had more time, we would have sourced for donors as cash had to be controlled tightly because each shipment of 2,000 tons from Penang to the port near Lhokseumawe (four hours by road to Banda Aceh) cost us RM15,000.

It took 21 volunteers, a desperately sourced forklift, and close to three hours to unload the 2,000 cartons on that Saturday morning.

And it was an hour after unloading that someone spotted that the expiry dates on the boxes - March 2005.

Frantic calls to the people in charge met with defensiveness and belligerence. Among the most galling statements was this one: 'We can still move this stock at the supermarkets'.

When told that the Acehnese had more than enough problems on their hands and did not need food poisoning to add to their misery, the drink giant representative got riled up and listed what he and his family had been doing to help the tsunami victims and how his firm had given away cartons of drinks to the affected victims in Kuala Muda.

How unscrupulous can they get?

Needless to say, we insisted that they take back their goods. And the saddest part of it is, we have probably missed loading the soya bean milk into this week's shipment.

But we will definitely get it on board for the next!