Government Promises Aid for Sumatra Flood Victims

The Jakarta Post
Thursday, January 4, 2007

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

The government promised Wednesday to help rebuild houses damaged by massive floods in Aceh and North Sumatra that forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, speaking in Medan after visiting flood-hit areas in Aceh Tamiang regency in Aceh and Langkat regency in North Sumatra, said the government hoped to have the damaged houses rebuilt within three months.

A week of flooding killed at least 120 people in the two provinces and damaged thousands of houses.

Officials said earlier more than 13,000 homes across six districts in Aceh had been severely damaged or washed away entirely. More than 1,700 of the homes are in Aceh Tamiang district, where water reached several meters high in some areas.

The minister told officials in each flood-hit regency to conduct surveys and list all the damaged houses to speed up reconstruction work.

"Each regent has a week to register (the damaged houses), and all of the houses will be taken care of in a short time," Aburizal said.

Asked the cost of the reconstruction work in the two provinces, the minister said it depended on the scale of the damage reported by the regents.

He said, however, the government was planning to allocate Rp 10 million for each damaged house.

The funds will be taken from the government's disaster and village development budgets.

Before reconstruction work can begin, he said, the mud must first be cleared from affected homes. Aburizal said the government had requested assistance from the Indonesian Military (TNI) for this phase of clean-up efforts.

"Twelve days after the floods in Aceh and Langkat, the floodwaters have subsided but the mud still inundates many places. This will be cleaned up with the TNI's assistance," the minister said.

He said he was satisfied with the handling of the flooding in Aceh and North Sumatra, including in dealing with those displaced by the disaster.

All displaced residents, he said, have received sufficient food and medical assistance.

However, he acknowledged that some flood victims, particularly in Aceh Tamiang, were still in need of clean water. The rough terrain in the regency has made it difficult to distribute water.

Based on reports received from regents, he said flooding in Aceh Tamiang regency, the most badly affected area, had killed 39 people. Another 19 people reportedly died in Langkat regency in North Sumatra.

Across Aceh, the number of people killed in the flooding stands at 76 as of Monday, with another 155 still missing. The number of displaced stands at about 200,000.

In addition to rebuilding damaged houses, Aburizal said the government would also help replant forests in Aceh and North Sumatra.

"There is a plan to re-green a million hectares of damaged forest in Aceh and North Sumatra this year," he said.

The government has blamed illegal logging as one of the main causes of the deadly floods, and has pledged to intensify its efforts to replant forests.