Electricity returns to North Maluku

M. Azis Tunny, The Jakarta Post/North Maluku

While residents in North Sumatra and Java are experiencing electricity blackouts, North Maluku residents have again begun to enjoy electricity services since Thursday.

Electricity has returned to 10 remote subdistricts here after United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the European Union (EU) repaired electricity networks that had been destroyed in sectarian violence in 2000.

The rehabilitation project costing Euro 426,954 had taken place since March and will benefit thousands of people living in the 10 remote subdistricts of South Halmahera regency, North Maluku. The project has reinstated, among others, a 20 kilovolt electrical relay station in the area.

Patrick Sweeting, head of Crisis Prevention and Recovery Unit with the UNDP's Indonesia operations, said that the project was aimed at, among others, encouraging displaced persons to return to the 10 remote subdistricts.

The project was also aimed at providing electrical infrastructure to support crucial public services such as hospitals and schools, said Sweeting during the project inauguration in the Wayauwa subdistrict in South Halmahera. The project inauguration on Thursday was attended by North Maluku governor Thaib Armayn and EU ambassador to Indonesia Jean Breteche.

Earlier, the UNDP had repaired electricity networks in Galela and South Tobelo districts in North Halmahera.

Besides the electricity rehabilitation program, the UNDP will also soon embark on another program to support post conflict recovery in North Maluku. The program is called the Development Peace Program.

Foreign donors have been actively pouring money to Maluku after the area was rocked by sectarian violence in 1999. Bloody clashes between Muslims and Christians killed thousands of people and displaced tens of thousands people. The conflict subsided only in 2002 after a government sponsored peace pact was signed by the warring parties in South Sulawesi.