Ara Ready to Build Permanent Housing for Sumatra Disaster Victims, Awaiting Regional Government Proposals

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - The Minister of Housing and Settlement Areas (PKP), Maruarar Sirait or Ara, has expressed readiness to accelerate the construction of permanent housing (huntap) for flood victims in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra. However, the realisation of this construction is still awaiting proposals for locations and data on recipients from local governments. This statement was made by Ara after meeting with the Interior Minister (Mendagri) Tito Karnavian and the Head of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) Amalia Adininggar Widyasanti in Jakarta on Wednesday (15/4/2026). Ara assured that her ministry has prepared all construction needs, from human resources to technical teams that will be deployed to the field. “We at the Ministry of PKP are ready, the human resources are ready, and we have been preparing three echelon one teams to go to the field for several months,” she said on Thursday (16/4/2026). “As soon as it is determined, we are ready to immediately build permanent housing for our brothers and sisters who are disaster victims in West Sumatra, North Sumatra, and Aceh,” Ara emphasised. She added that the central government hopes the huntap construction can start soon so that affected communities can quickly obtain decent and safe housing. Meanwhile, Tito emphasised that accelerating construction greatly depends on the completeness of data from local governments. He mentioned giving a deadline until next Wednesday for submitting that data. “This permanent housing construction depends on the speed of data from local governments. We are giving a deadline until next Wednesday. In parallel, BPS and BNPB will also go down to help the data collection process. If by that time limit the data is not ready, then regions that already have ready data will be prioritised for construction,” Tito stressed. He also targets completing the permanent housing construction this year with support from local governments at the provincial to district/city levels. BPS Head Amalia Adininggar Widyasanti explained that her agency is verifying and validating permanent housing proposals from affected regions. To date, 12 districts/cities have submitted verified data. “The majority of permanent housing proposals come from communities whose homes are severely damaged, lost, or located in disaster-prone areas. We continue to help accelerate the verification process so that construction can be carried out soon,” Amalia said. Of the 45 regions in focus, only 12 districts/cities have submitted data, so there are still 33 regions targeted to complete their data within the next week. The government hopes that through cross-ministerial coordination and local governments, the permanent housing construction for disaster victims in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra can start soon and be completed in 2026.