Govt determined to solve resettlement problem this year

Govt determined to solve resettlement problem this year

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is determined to send around 208,000 refugees back
to their home villages or resettle them in other, safer areas
this year, but it will postpone the resettlement program in war-
torn Aceh as the military offensive there is still underway.

Director General for Population Mobility at the
Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, Dyah Paramawartiningsih,
said here on Friday that there were still 8,000 transmigrants who
had left their settlement areas in Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku
and Papua because of the recent ethnic and sectarian conflicts in
these regions.

"Some of them will be sent back to their original settlement
areas, while some others will be resettled in new resettlement
areas across the country," she said after seeing off 100 West
Java transmigrant families who were leaving for their new homes
in Banyu Asin, South Sumatra.

She said she was also optimistic that 200,000 indigenous
people who had fled conflicts in their home areas in Kalimantan,
Central Sulawesi, Maluku and North Maluku would be sent back home
or resettled in new areas by the end of this year.

She added that the situation in these former conflict areas
had been gradually returning to normal.

Sambas in West Kalimantan and Sampit in Central Kalimantan
were affected by a racial conflict between indigenous Melayu and
Dayak people and Madurese settlers in 2000 and 2001, while Poso
in Central Sulawesi, Maluku and North Maluku were the scenes of a
bloody sectarian conflict that lasted from 1999 until 2002.

Dyah said the government during a recent limited Cabinet
meeting decided to resolve the refugee problem by Dec. 31, 2003,
at the latest. If this proved to be impossible, the problem would
be handled under the poverty eradication program.

She failed to explain the difference between the resettlement
program and the poverty eradication program. Under the refugee
resettlement program, refugees are given one kilogram of rice and
Rp 500 per person per day, and Rp 8 million per family to go back
home, while under the transmigration program, transmigrants are
paid their transportation costs, and are given two hectares of
farmland. Their living costs are covered for their first year in
the resettlement area.

Since 1999, the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, in
cooperation with local and foreign non-governmental
organizations, has resettled one million refugees who were
displaced by ethnic and sectarian conflicts in the regions,
including Aceh and West Timor.

Meanwhile, Untung Subianto, a member of one of the 100
families being resettled again, this time in South Sumatra, said
he and his family had left Aceh some years ago when rebels
attempted to drive all migrants from the province.

"Sometime when the situation returns to normal, I will return
to Aceh to work my large farm, which has being lying idle now for
years," he said.

Touched by Untung's words, Dyah called on the transmigrants to
keep their land certificates, saying: "All of you will be allowed
to return to Aceh after normalcy is restored in the province, but
now you should work hard to survive and to make money for when
you go back to Aceh."

She said it was impossible for the refugees to go back to Aceh
at the moment as the situation still remained uncertain following
the imposition of martial law and the launching of the military
offensive to quell the armed rebellion by the Free Aceh Movement
(GAM).