Agency renews vow to speed up Aceh recovery

Agency renews vow to speed up Aceh recovery

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias
(BRR) reiterated its promise on Tuesday to speed up
reconstruction work in tsunami-affected areas.

The statement came during a biannual meeting of the agency
with non-governmental agency grouping the Coordination Forum for
Aceh and Nias (CFAN) to discuss the recovery process in the two
disaster areas.

"The meeting concluded that BRR has made rapid progress, but
we also agreed that the agency needed to (further) speed up its
mission," BRR head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto told said after the
meeting in Jakarta.

The BRR, which was set up in April, has completed the
reconstruction of some 10,000 houses and was completing the
building of 22,000 more homes, Kuntoro said.

"This is more than a half of the total number of houses
constructed by (state developer) Perumnas across the country in
one year," he said.

The BRR aims to have cleared tsunami debris in some 90 percent
of fishing ponds and rice fields across Aceh by the end of 2005
in order to allow farmers to resume working.

World Bank country director Andrew Steer admitted that in the
initial stages, the reconstruction process in Aceh and Nias was
slow because Indonesia chose to set up a special agency to deal
with the reconstruction process and to implement bottom-up,
community-based policies.

"These two things have made the reconstruction process slow in
the initial stages," Steer said.

However, he said the BRR had actively sped up the process to
make it more effective.

United Nations resident coordinator in Jakarta Bo Asplund said
the BRR had done a good job.

Kuntoro said there had been no substantial problems faced by
the agency during the reconstruction process.

The BRR earlier said that the slow progress was partly due to
the delays caused by bureaucracy. Another problem was a lack of
coordination among donors, ministries and other government
agencies.

Earlier Acehnese students staged a protest, demanding the
government dissolve the BRR since it had failed to fulfill
tsunami victims' expectations, with many still living in
makeshift tents and eating only instant noodles ahead of the
fasting month of Ramadhan.

Over 500,000 people lost their homes due to the Dec. 26
tsunami, while some 130,000 others were killed. The disaster also
destroyed much of Aceh's infrastructure, particularly in Banda
Aceh, and Nias.

The BRR plans to build some 70,000 houses, and repair or
rebuild roads, bridges, harbors, schools and public health posts
there.