Govt to start building houses in Aceh soon

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.