Govt to start building houses in Aceh soon

Eva C. Komandjaja and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is expected to start the construction next month of permanent houses for the some 82,000 Acehnese families who lost there homes to the Dec. 26 tsunami, according to a senior government official.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Alwi Shihab said on Thursday that the housing complexes would be built outside of Banda Aceh and Meulaboh, the two Aceh cities that were worst affected by the disaster.

"The government will hold a meeting next week with regents from the hinterland of both cities with a view to finding out which locations would be best for the housing complexes," he told the press after a meeting at the Vice Presidential Office.

Chaired by Vice President Jusuf Kalla, the meeting was also attended by, among others, Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari, State Minister for Social Affairs Bachtiar Chamsyah and Minister of Public Works Djoko Kirmanto.

The planned houses would each measure 36 square meters. While the government had yet to allocate the necessary funding, it would nevertheless press ahead and put the projects out to tender.

As of Wednesday, some 412,000 displaced persons had moved from tents into temporary barracks.

The government planned to build the housing complexes outside Banda Aceh and Meulaboh as it was still finalizing its master plans for the reconstruction of both cities.

Elsewhere, the deputy for environmental law at the Office of the State Minister for the Environment, Masnellyarti Hilman, said that a ministry team had conducted a rapid environmental impact assessment of the tsunami-stricken areas.

Masnellyarti said that groundwater located up to two kilometers away from the coast had been heavily contaminated by E. Coli bacteria, which meant that the affected areas were now uninhabitable, and should be used instead as buffer zones.

The team also found that air pollution levels (total suspended solids) in and around the Banda Aceh area, especially along busy streets, were far above the safe limit of 230 ppm (parts per million).

"We found that in some places the figure reached around 660 ppm," she said.

However, Masnellyarti said that she realized that most displaced residents, especially fishermen, wanted to go back to the coast even though the environmental problems there were severe.

"We're trying to accommodate their wishes by drawing up detailed reconstruction plans so that although they would live in high-risk areas, we would be able to minimize the risks facing them," she said.