Archives - December 20, 2005

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&artmon=12&fyear=2005#

Aceh

Tonight, as you would have gathered from our preview, a Dateline
special on last December's disastrous Boxing Day tsunami. It may come
as rude shock to many that, a year down the track, only a fraction of
the people made homeless by the giant wave have been resettled
in permanent housing.

More than 2 million Asians are still living either in temporary
shelters or in tents, despite the presence of hundreds of aid agencies
and billions of dollars promised in international aid, including $1
billion from this country.

That said, the worst-affected area was and still is the Indonesian
province of Aceh, where they say permanent housing won't be completed
until mid-2007, and, only then, if everything goes according to plan.
Here's Chris Hammer.


REPORTER: Chris Hammer

Aceh has no clearly defined wet season. Torrential rains come all year
round, creating misery for the more than
60,000 people still living in tents one year after the tsunami.

People like Ainul, widowed by the tidal wave, and her four surviving
children.
She's sick of the tent.

AINUL, (Translation): When it rains a lot, when it's muddy and when
it's hot.

REPORTER: Do you have any idea how long you will be here in this tent
now or when you might move?

AINUL, (Translation): No I don't know.

REPORTER: So no-one's told you when you might move?

AINUL, (Translation): No.

By rights Ainul and her family should have been out of their tent long
ago. Her son Dede takes me to a house that was built for the family
five months ago by a Malaysian NGO, but they can't move in.

DEDE,AINUL'S SON (Translation): There are no amenities yet,there's no
well, no power.

REPORTER: Have you got a key?

DEDE, (Translation): Some have been handed over, some haven't because
the houses aren't ready.


Billions of dollars in aid have been committed to Aceh, but a year
after the earthquake and tsunami, progress on rebuilding is sporadic
and painfully slow.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER US PRESIDENT: It's very impressive. You see other
people have painted their walls and they've tried to individualise
their homes, it's quite moving, really.

Former US president Bill Clinton
is a special UN envoy for tsunami relief. He's come to Aceh to check
on progress.

REPORTER: Mr President, Chris Hammer from SBS Television in Australia,
this morning I visited...

At his departure press conference, I recount the predicament of Ainul
and her uninhabitable house.

...what do you say to her and people like her?

BILL CLINTON: What is the answer to the power question? Maybe I should
ask Mr Kuntoro to answer
because I don't know the answer.

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto is the Jakarta-based head of the BRR -the
Indonesian authority overseeing reconstruction in Aceh. I'm told he
isn't available for interview, but I manage to intercept him a few
days later as he inspects Australian-funded reconstruction work at
Banda Aceh's port.He tells me that of about 120,000 houses planned,
only about 16,000 have been finished and the move to permanent housing
won't be completed until mid-2007.

KUNTORO MANGKUSUBROTO, BRR HEAD: Well, actually, the rehabilitation
and reconstruction of this area just started in the month of June or
July. So well, we are very grateful for the money here but still
building houses cannot be in one week or two week or one month, two
months.

Out in the villages, many people are fending for themselves. After
three decades of insurgency, there's widespread distrust of the BRR
and its Javanese hierarchy.
Abu Nasir Sufi is one of the founders of the GAM independence movement.

ABU NASIR, (Translation): The BRR, they all get big wages, they've all
got nice cars. They get 25 to 75 million rupiah a month. Say they've
got 100 employees, how much is being spent on wages? So all the money
that should reach the Acehnese people affected by the tsunami is being
used for wages.

When the tsunami hit Aceh last December, images of Lamba-uk were
beamed around the world. Its mosque remaining intact while the village
surrounding it was swept away. Of 6,500 villagers, a little more than
a thousand survived.
Here I meet community leader Hasballah Ahba, he looks out on the
shantytown
the surviving villagers have managed to scrape together.

He tells me the Americans have put in a new water supply, but the
Indonesian authorities have given no indication when power or sewerage
may be connected.
Yet Hasbollah and the others are determined to rebuild.

HASBALLAH AHBA, COMMUNITY LEADER: First, I don't want my village is
lost, and I don't want to stop the people to help us so much because
we not need to buy the land because the land is our own. I don't want
our village lost, that's why I'm back from Medan…...to motivate the
people.

The day I visit here it isn't rain but the 43-degree heat that's
making life in the tents unbearable. The Turkish Red Crescent promised
1,000 houses back in March, so far they've built only this one model home.
Not far away is the shack of English woman Rebecca Dauncey, who's
lived in Aceh for six years. She's moved to Lamba-uk to help her
friends rebuild their lives.

REBECCA DAUNCEY: Well, I've been living in one of these shacks here
for over a month and there's no cats in the village, so every shack is
full of rats. There's no sewage, there's no electricity, no phones
here, and this is a year down the road.

Resentment towards the UN, the Indonesian authorities and the
international aid agencies is beginning to emerge.

REBECCA DAUNCEY: It's unforgivable that it's been so slow, actually.
Considering the amount of money that was donated here, to have people
still living in the conditions that they are living in a year later,
there is no excuse at all.

DAVID HELMSEY: It's designed to be cool, to have lot of ventilation,
you see the windows.

David Helmsey is an engineer with
Australian charity World Vision.

DAVID HELMSEY: ...through some screening that will be installed.

World Vision is committed to building more than 4,000 houses near the
capital Banda Aceh. The NGO was here
within days of the disaster, yet construction didn't begin for nine
months. So far only 233 houses have been completed.

DAVID HELMSEY: Yeah, our approach is to spend a lot of effort, a lot
of energy upfront in the planning stage so that we build a permanent
community that suits the needs of all the people who live there over
the long haul.

REPORTER: I mean, looking back, do you think it would have been
possible to do it more quickly?

DAVID HELMSEY: I don't believe it's gone too slow. I believe that our
approach, World Vision's approach has been the correct one.

World Vision expects to complete its 4,000 houses by next October, but
it's clear other NGOs have made commitments they will be unable to
meet. All around Banda Aceh, the land has been cleared but rebuilding
is sporadic. And everywhere there are the banners of international aid
organisations marking out their territory.

STEVE HOLTOM, AUSTRALIAN BUSINESSMAN: It was sort of like a land grab
after the... ..when the clean-up started. All these NGOs ran around
the place and said.....and put their flags in the ground. These flags
buried in the ground all around the state with NGOs' names on them
saying "I'm going to do this." But the flags are still there and some
have got tents there and some have got water tanks there but the NGOs
that have made all those promises back in the early days, a lot of
those we learnt today have actually halved their construction plans.

Eddy Purwanto is the deputy head of the reconstruction authority. He
has direct responsibility for housing.

EDDY PURWANTO: Actually we already evaluated all the performance of
the NGO and we are trying to get as much as possible their commitment
to build soon.

REPORTER: So are you going to say to some if they can't meet their
commitments, they should hand it over to someone else?

EDDY PURWANTO: Yes.

REPORTER: Have any NGOs done that?

EDDY PURWANTO: We have several of them already handed over to other
NGOs or to the governments.

The Australian Government has committed $1 billion towards rebuilding
Aceh. This Australian-funded team is mapping tsunami-affected villages
so people can be sure of who owns what in a dramatically altered
landscape. It's important work, but it's slow going.
Of the $1 billion less than 10% had been spent by the end of November.

DR BERNADETTE WHITELUM, AUSAID: How much remains to be committed is
really a decision for the Indonesian and Australian government to work
on together and they continue to discuss it and make decisions
depending on the need.

STEVE HOLTOM: Of the Australian Government money, as an Australian
business, it's quite embarrassing, because there's just nothing to
show and everyone up here knows the Australian Government so far has
spent very little. There's nothing here to show for that amount of money.

Despite the ongoing housing crisis, progress is being made here,
sometimes remarkable progress. This is where the village of Lambung
once stood. Before the tsunami, 2,500 people lived here, only three
women and one child survived, plus 200 men who were out at sea
fishing.
What this village has managed to achieve in the past year is truly
inspirational.

YUBAHAR ZAWI: This for our living, this one for me so we got the
bedroom here.

For a week, the men grieved uncontrollably. And then village elder
Yubahar Zawi gathered them together.

YUBAHAR ZAWI: Over here, you see, this open.

Using techniques learnt from his grandfather and material scavenged
from the tsunami debris, they began to build a traditional Acehnese house.

YUBAHAR ZAWI: Ah, we don't want to live in the tents before, because
we hungry, we dirty, so I teach my people in the village how to build
the house there, because we know that's the end of the worst. I think
we must work together, work hard. But then...we must work hard to
build. They forgot the tsunami, if they remember, it make them crazy.

One year on and the men have built this new village, using local, all
natural materials. The raised houses - cool, well ventilated and
earthquake proof - have become a hit. The villagers have been
commissioned to build 700 more. In the space of a year, the men of Lambung
have transformed themselves from fishermen to builders. Meet them, and
it's hard to believe they've lost so much.

YUBAHAR ZAWI: We have no cry, don't remember tsunami, we're going to
have new life you see? A new life, because if we sat every day doing
nothing... so we have to forget that, ah we start the new life.

Two Lambung men have already remarried, another 10 expect to do so
within the next year.
Throughout Aceh, there are people
working towards the promise of a new life. Before the tsunami, Aceh
was a closed and fear-filled society, wracked by three decades of
combat between separatist guerrillas and the Indonesian army. Now a
peace deal struck in August shows every sign of lasting.

ABU NASIR SUFI (Translation): I'm happy because there are no more
casualties. It used to be that every day and every night we'd hear of
innocent civilian casualties.

No-one will ever say that the tsunami was a good thing,but many in
Aceh hope that good will come of it.

AZWAR HASAN: Psychologically, mentally, people are living,
or were living very, very, very scary situation. But after the tsunami
came,
one of very positive things, and I think that it feels from any single
Acehnese
that, we are free to do what we like to do. Free meaning that you can
go, you can work without worrying that suddenly there going to be,
what you call it, fighting between two different groups.

In Lamba-uk, as in the rest of Aceh, there is a determination to
concentrate on the here and now.

REPORTER: This is where you will live?

MAN: Yeah, my live, yes, yes, my live here. And we maybe dead here,
later, later. But not yet? Yeah, not yet. Yeah.

Reconstruction is slow but progress is being made and for the first
time in a long time, the Acehnese have something to smile about.