YANGON - MYANMAR's premier promised better housing for cyclone victims in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta, where many people have received only a plastic sheet to use for shelter, state media said on Monday.

Cyclone Nargis left more than 138,000 people dead or missing when it struck Myanmar on May 2, washing away entire villages. Another 2.4 million people are in need of food, shelter, or other aid.

'Plans are under way... to accommodate (the homeless) at better houses than the previous ones they lived (in),' Prime Minister Thein Sein said in the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

'Officials concerned are to supervise cultivation tasks,' Mr Thein Sein said during a tour of the delta on Sunday, adding that seeds and tools would be distributed to help survivors replant their destroyed vegetable crops.

Myanmar's junta has come under fierce international condemnation for its slow response to the cyclone and for imposing restrictions on aid workers that have delayed the delivery of relief supplies.

Two weeks ago, an assessment team led by the United Nations, regional experts and government officials estimated that 59 per cent of houses in the storm zone were severely damaged.

The report said new homes being built from bamboo would last at most two years, and called for sturdier housing for the storm victims.

So far, 428,000 plastic sheets have been distributed to victims, according to the United Nations, leaving families to huddle under their stretch of tarp for more than two months as almost daily monsoon rains sweep through.