Myanmar ? U.N. officials expressed hope Monday they will soon be able to get help to more than 1 million cyclone survivors still waiting for food and shelter, if Myanmar’s ruling junta keeps its promise to let foreign aid workers into the country.

More than three weeks after the storm, people huddled along roadsides, desperate for any sort of handout. The U.N. estimated less than half the 2.4 million people victimized by the May 2-3 storm had received emergency assistance.

In Pyapon, a coastal township southwest of Yangon, hundreds of makeshift huts had been thrown up along a road. Women and children squatted outside, the children begging for food, their arms outstretched as vehicles pass.

The area can be reached fairly easily, but the survivors said they had not received any aid from Myanmar’s military government and were surviving on donations from private citizens and Buddhist monks.

“I have no hope that the help will come,” said Aye Shwe, a 52-year-old farmer who has been living with his family of eight in a hut that he built with scrounged bamboo and thatch.