Tsunami village yet to see aid windfall<\/p>\n
Bill Tarrant, Reuters\/Lampuuk, Aceh<\/p>\n
Juwaria hammers away at cement rubble, extracting iron rods she
\nwill sell to buy food, oblivious that her tsunami-flattened
\nvillage is benefiting from an aid windfall.<\/p>\n
Many foreign visitors have come to Lampuuk -- including former
\nU.S. presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton -- and a variety of
\naid workers have left their banners in the town, where more than
\nfour out of every five people died in the Dec. 26 earthquake and
\ntsunami.<\/p>\n
But almost five months after the disaster, the village with a
\npopulation of 6,500 before the tsunami hit is still a sea of
\nrubble.<\/p>\n
Bush and Clinton raised US$10 million at a Houston, Texas
\nfundraiser on May 6 for projects in four countries swamped by the
\nmonster waves that are feared to have killed 228,000 people
\naround the region, including 160,000 in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Some of the money is earmarked for Lampuuk, a coastal town
\njust outside Aceh's provincial capital, Banda Aceh.<\/p>\n
\"Oh, we didn't know about this,\" village chief and rice farmer
\nHamdan Hasyen, 40, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
\"We're happy to hear that. Hopefully, they'll come again and
\nstay with us so they can see the situation here,\" he said, adding
\nthat Lampuuk had renamed its main street \"Bill Clinton George
\nBush Road\".<\/p>\n
Lampuuk is known as the place where the tsunami traveled the
\nfurthest inland -- some 7 km (4 miles) until it smacked into
\nsteep hillsides that show wave marks 10 meters high.
\nThe only building left standing was a two-store mosque, which now
\ncan be seen from miles away.<\/p>\n
About 250 of the village's survivors live in tattered UN tents
\nthat regularly collapse now the western monsoon has set in. The
\nrest live in army-style barracks. They draw power from a 1,500-
\nwatt generator and water from a huge tank donated by Oxfam.<\/p>\n
Money from the Bush-Clinton fundraiser will be used to rebuild
\na school, a health clinic, women's center and a small market as
\nwell as repair the water system in Lampuuk, which the two ex-
\npresidents visited on Feb. 20. It will also pay for some
\nscholarships to universities in Texas and Arkansas.<\/p>\n
That all seems a little distant to people who are struggling
\nto survive.<\/p>\n
Hasyen and others in the town say nobody has given them food
\naid since the end of February.<\/p>\n
The World Food Program, which is distributing 10,000 tonnes of
\nfood a month to nearly 600,000 displaced people in Aceh, concedes
\nthat Lampuuk is missing out.<\/p>\n
CARE, one of the groups distributing WFP commodities, had
\ndetermined that the people living in Lampuuk's tent camp were
\ngetting food from another aid group and decided to stop
\ndeliveries, a WFP official in Banda Aceh told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Hasyen insists that this is not the case and points to a white
\nboard on the Rahamatullah mosque showing a list of NGO
\nactivities, none of which involve food distribution.
\nThe WFP said it would send a team to the village to investigate
\nthe situation.<\/p>\n
The group's emergency coordinator, Charlie Higgins, said WFP
\nstopped distributing food when it determined recipients had an
\nindependent source of livelihood and no longer need relief.<\/p>\n
\"If people have an income, it's counterproductive to give out
\naid. We're considering how to do that in certain areas.\"<\/p>\n
The overall situation in Lampuuk illustrates a central dilemma
\nin the Aceh aid effort. While the government has declared the
\nemergency phase of the disaster over, and foreign aid groups are
\npoised to begin rehabilitation work, hundreds of thousands of
\npeople are still struggling to survive day to day.<\/p>\n
Many Lampuuk residents now comb the rubble for concrete
\nreinforcing rods they will sell to a scrap dealer. Although they
\nwear USAID gloves and galoshes with shirts that read \"Cleaning up
\nEquals Prosperity\", very little cleaning up is being done.
\nJuwaria, 48, says she can salvage abut 30 kg of iron rods a day,
\nor about Rp 24,000 ($2.50) worth. \"I'm selling the iron for
\nfood.\"<\/p>\n
Hasyen says Lampuuk has enough equipment for only 50 people to
\nwork in the clean-up crews. \"The rest are out looking for iron to
\nget money for food, to get petrol for the generator and stuff.\"
\nRehabilitation work is progressing in Lampuuk, although the
\nnatural elements are still the worst of enemies.<\/p>\n
Oxfam erected frames for a couple of model temporary homes
\nbefore they were blown down in a windstorm this week. It is also
\nhelping to restore paddy fields.<\/p>\n
German Agro Asia is planting mango tree gardens and working to
\ncounter the elements by sowing pine saplings to create a
\nwindbreak on the beach.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/tsunami-village-yet-to-see-aid-windfall-1447893297",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
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