Drought-hit Jayawijaya gets more relief offers

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)