Drought-hit Jayawijaya gets more relief offers
JAKARTA (JP): The drought-hit Jayawijaya regency in Indonesia's easternmost province is to get more help as the embassies of Japan and the United States here have offered to send relief, Antara reported.
Regent J.B. Wenas was quoted by the news agency as saying the offers were made via telephone from the ambassadors of the respective countries asking about the regency's most urgent needs.
Jayawijaya is one of the areas worst affected by this year's severe drought. Four hundred and thirteen drought-related deaths have been recorded, most caused by cholera and occurring between August and mid-September.
Wenas said similar offers of assistance had been made by several senior government officials in Jakarta. The last dispatch of food relief from the Bank of Indonesia came through Saturday with the help of the Air Force's Hercules aircraft.
He said the regency's natural disaster management coordinating unit received Friday Rp 4,466,000 (US$1,300) in aid from the province's Bank Pembangunan Daerah.
It also received two sacks of cassava from Jayawijaya's National Youth Committee (KNPI), and instant noodles and rice bought by small change donated by thousands of elementary school students in Wamena, Jayawijaya's capital.
"We've handed over the food collected by the pupils to the unit in the hope it will soon be channeled to those in need," Antara quoted Biutana, headmaster of the state-run elementary school in the regency's Mulele subdistrict, as saying.
Jayawijaya is populated by about 500,000 people, one fourth of Irian Jaya's total population, who live in 28 subdistricts scattered in the vastly rugged mountainous region, which is about the size of East Java.
Wenas said the regency needed more rice, instant noodles, salted fish, milk powder, sugar and cooking oil, as well as cooking pans and plastic utensils.
Wenas said the relief was needed to anticipate the harsher impact of failed crops caused by the drought.
He said that in the long run the regency would need agricultural machinery and experts to help villagers recover their parched farmland. More doctors are also needed to promote villagers' health, he added.
This year's prolonged dry spell, believed to have been induced by the El Nino weather phenomenon, has aggravated forest fires across Kalimantan and Sumatra. It has also caused the failure of crops and rice harvests in some parts of Central Java.
Antara reported Saturday that "thousands of hectares" of rice fields in Central Java's Boyolali regency had dried up in the last three months, also drying up farmers' income and their livelihood.
The same plight was also reported in the regencies of Grobogan, Sragen, Rembang, Wonogiri, Karanganyar, Pati and Blora where most villagers had become jobless in the last three months.
Some villagers told the news agency that they had run out of food since last May and were forced to go to cities like Semarang and Jakarta to seek work to make ends meet.
Worsening the plight was the shortage of clean water, Antara reported. Wells have dried up since last month.
Blora regency spokesman Wahyu Suharto said the local government was aware of the drought situation, and the administration had been supplying villages with water, albeit in limited amount because there were only a few water tanks. (aan)