Govt to set up makeshift schools throughout Aceh
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government said on Tuesday that it planned to immediately set up makeshift schools in some 95 locations near refugee camps in Aceh to allow students in the tsunami-hit province to resume their education activities.
Minister for National Education Bambang Sudibyo explained that school activities in devastated areas during the first month will be focussed more on efforts to deal with psychological and emotional impacts on students, helping them overcome the trauma of the disaster.
"We have also ordered surviving schools (in the province) to accept students from other (damaged) schools, and to set up two shifts, one for the morning and one in the afternoon," he told reporters following a meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The massive undersea quake and subsequent tsunami on Dec. 26 washed away many school buildings in Aceh. The province's west coast areas bore the brunt of the disaster.
According to one estimate some 420 school buildings across Aceh were destroyed by the disaster, and some 1,000 teachers died.
School activities in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh are expected to resume on Jan. 26. Some schools in Meulaboh, where more than 28,000 people have been confirmed dead, reopened on Monday. The mood on the first day of school was somber as many students were still traumatized by the calamity and by aftershocks of up to 6.0 on the Richter scale. Many students still preferred to stay in their temporary camps, which some claimed might undermine efforts by the government to resume school activities and help create a sense of normalcy in the province. Getting children back to school is seen as crucial in the early phases of Aceh's rehabilitation process.
The government plans to bring in new teachers from outside the province to facilitate the rehabilitation of the school system in Aceh.
"We have received offers from several universities to send their students to support the education process. State-owned Gadjah Mada University will send some 500 students to the province to teach," Bambang said.
The minister said that for the first few weeks school activities will be focussed on psychological healing for the children
"We will begin with the cognitive aspects after they have recovered from the trauma, but we will do our best to ensure that they are not left behind compared to students in the rest of the country," Bambang said.
In relation to higher education, he said that the province faced a difficult problem amid a serious shortage of lecturers, citing as an example that the main Syiah Kuala University had lost 96 lecturers with another 76 missing.
"We will ask other universities to accept Aceh students, or we will have to provide substitute lecturers for them," he said.
Separately, chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) Seto Mulyadi said that the commission would soon launch a national correspondence program between Acehnese students with other children across the country as part of efforts to overcome children's trauma.
"Acehnese children need love and attention, and hopefully by corresponding with their peers outside the province they will be able to talk through and finally overcome their trauma," Seto said.