Don't betray Aceh - Get coordinated
Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta
Bodies are still scattered on the streets and under the rubble in Banda Aceh, Meulaboh and many other towns in Aceh. Tens of thousands of survivors are still without food, clean water, medicines or even clothes to change into.
Their ordeal and suffering continue.
Such is the scene depicted by Metro TV on Thursday, five days after the deadly combination of a strong earthquake and massive tidal waves devastated Aceh.
For the dead and the living, help is still not coming, or it is not coming fast enough.
The situation in Aceh seems to be getting more desperate by the day.
And it's not as if help is not forthcoming.
Relief supplies sent from national and foreign organizations and governments are reaching the Banda Aceh airport. In fact, supplies are literally piling up there by the ton. But they are not being distributed quickly to the intended targets.
Metro TV's Najwa Shihab, who has kept the nation abreast of developments -- or in this case lack of developments -- in Aceh these past few days, could not hide her frustration as she reported on camera live on Thursday.
"There is no coordination," she said as her voice faded and replaced by sobs. "I have seen little change from yesterday."
Indonesia faces a Herculean task. The country has never experienced a calamity of this magnitude before -- over 45,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Still, a little more coordination could ease the pain and suffering of the people in Aceh.
Take the issue of burying tens of thousands of dead as an example.
There aren't enough workers left in these areas to bury the dead. Many Acehnese are either too stricken by grief to do anything because they have lost loved ones, or simply too weak as they have been without food, clean water and medicines.
The job is left to volunteers brought in from the outside. But there is only so much they can do. The task of moving badly mangled and putrefying bodies from under the rubble and burying them inevitably takes much of their time.
Bringing in volunteers from outside requires good coordination. They have to bring their own tents to sleep in, and their own food. They cannot eat rations intended for victims or use the limited number of tents available in the area.
And they need heavy equipment, like cranes, to bury the dead en mass.
Then, there is the question of the lack of trucks to take relief supplies from the airport to the people. And even if there were enough trucks available, there is not enough fuel to run them. And then there is the question of clearing roads of debris before they become passable.
The Metro TV reporter hit the nail on the head when she hammered at the lack of coordination on the ground in bringing help to the people of Aceh.
Coordinating the relief operation is now the biggest challenge.
The outside world is ready to help the people of Aceh. Massive fund raising campaigns are underway throughout Indonesia and the rest of the world. But it is frustrating to see that the relief operation has been hampered by poor, in fact almost non-existent, coordination.
Whose job is it then to coordinate the relief operation?
The Aceh provincial administration and its structure were decimated. It is estimated that only half of the administration's employees in Banda Aceh survived the tragedy. And most government offices in Banda Aceh were destroyed.
Without a government structure in place, coordination becomes almost non-existent.
The central government had to step in. There is nobody else around to do the job.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla only announced this decision on Wednesday when it could have been taken on Day 1 or Day 2 of the calamity. And even after the announcement was made, someone down the bureaucratic line insisted that the Civil Emergency government in Aceh was still in control.
Another sign of poor coordination was the question of permits for foreign relief agencies to operate in Aceh. By invoking national disaster status, the government effectively opens the way for these groups to send aid directly to Aceh. Jusuf Kalla reaffirmed this, but yet another lower ranking official insisted that they must all obtain permits from the government, which can take two weeks or more to issue.
We can understand why it took two days for the government to restore power and telecommunication facilities in Aceh: many of the power and telecommunication workers in the area were also killed in the tragedy.
But five days after the disaster struck, surely the relief supplies should start reaching the victims.
Where is the coordination?
The presence of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla in Aceh earlier this week brought a lot of hope and comfort to the people there that help was on its way.
Their presence also led to the impression that they were there to supervise hands-on the rescue and relief operations.
But the reality on the ground on Day 5 has been very disappointing to say the least.
Unless help gets underway soon, the goodwill created by those presidential visits will quickly dissipate. And frustration, as expressed by the Metro TV reporter, will start to set in. Her frustration is a reflection of the frustration of the people of Aceh, and of people in the rest of the country.
Unless help gets underway soon, we will be confronting yet another horrific calamity: The number of deaths will soar, and not because of the discovery of more bodies in some remote villages. This time, the fatalities will increase because of our own neglect and our failure to help them on time.
This republic has done its utmost over these past few years to defuse separatist sentiments among Aceh people. At times, the military acted over-zealously at the expense of people's human rights as it fought the separatist rebels.
If this nation, and particularly this government, still believes in the "territorial integrity" of Indonesia that includes Aceh, then we must show it, with the same zealous determination that we have shown to keep Aceh a part of the Indonesian state.
Save our Aceh. Save our Souls.
The writer is editor-in-chief of The Jakarta Post.