BRR on right track, but needs to work harder: Kuntoro

Adnkronos International, Rome

The head of the seven-month-old Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR), Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, has robustly defended its achievements so far in rebuilding the province, which was devastated by last December's massive earthquake and tsunami.

Housing remains the agency's top priority, he told Adnkronos International (AKI). By the end of this year, the agency is on track to have built some 30,000 new houses, a figure that will rise to 78,000 by the end of 2006, an impressive feat when compared with the 60,000 houses built in the rest of Indonesia in the course of one year, he noted.

But with more than half a million people still living in camps that suffer from poor sanitation and frequent flooding, "we need to work a lot harder," Kuntoro, a former academic and government minister, said during a visit to Rome.

He is in Italy to drum up more financial and logistical support from the UN agencies and to court much-needed investment in the province from Italian firms.

The BRR -- which has a four-year mandate -- has already built 10,000 new houses since it began operating, and a further 13,000 are under construction, he said.

"But we will only have satisfied one-quarter of the demand: 120,000 houses are needed. This is a tall order -- a huge number of houses need to be built," he stated. By mid-2007, all people living in tents will have a house, he said.

The deadly 26 December tsunami killed 129,000 people in the region, and left 90,000 missing and 570,000 homeless.

The BRR has been criticized for the slow pace of progress in rebuilding Aceh, and the proportion of the agency's budget allocated to staff salaries. Commenting on the agency's effectiveness and allegations of poor coordination among donors, ministries and other government agencies, Kuntoro said: "Coordination is a hugely complex and tough task, but we are developing a regional coordination network, working with mayors and local government chiefs at the provincial and municipal levels."

The BRR's 150-strong team is working with more with 420 non- governmental organizations in Aceh, and has set up a new database to track progress in rebuilding the province, which the NGOs update and the BRR verifies, Kuntoro said.

On the issue of BRR staff salaries, he said there were two points to note: "First, nurses' salaries are paid out of the agency's budget, as well as those of some teachers. Second, to avoid the risk of project managers siphoning off money from the huge sums being handled by the agency, we have to pay them well -- US$1,000 a month, compared with an average Indonesian project manager's salary of $40 dollars per month," he explained.

Corruption is a "systemic" problem in Indonesia, and the BRR has a special anticorruption unit, which is currently investigating 88 complaints of corruption in Aceh, he noted. The unit is headed by a former anticorruption chief from Hong Kong.

Infrastructure projects are the agency's next priority, Mangkusubroto said. A new road connecting Aceh's main cities of Meulaboh and Banda Aceh is due to be completed in 2008, at a cost of $245 million, and the BRR "has targets" for the rebuilding of religious facilities, schools, hospitals and harbors over the next four years, he stated.

Rebuilding livelihoods is the BRR's third priority. The agency aims to have cleared tsunami debris from some 90 percent of fish pounds and paddy fields across Aceh by the end of 2005, with production to resume in the first quarter of 2006. The BRR is already distributing fishing boats, Kuntoro said. Agriculture and fisheries were among the sectors worst hit by the tsunami, but "Aceh is a very fertile area," he noted.

The earthquake and tsunami actually changed the topography of many areas of Aceh and Nias, making it difficult to find suitable land to build houses on, he said.

Progress was also being hampered by the highly bureaucratic procedures involved in obtaining certificates for land clearance, and a lack of access roads made it difficult to distribute building materials, he explained.