Govt to stop feeding, housing refugees next month

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government will next month stop providing food and housing assistance for thousands of displaced people who fled religious, ethnic and separatist conflicts throughout the country, a senior welfare minister said here on Tuesday.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla said the government would shut down the refugee camps in early January, and stop providing refugees with their current daily allowance of around Rp 3,000 (35 U.S. cents) per day.

He did not gave a precise date.

"The government cannot give assistance to the refugees indefinitely as it would spark envy among others," he told journalists meeting with Vice President Hamzah Haz.

"While other people are working hard, they are getting everything from the government," the minister added.

He said he hoped the move would encourage displaced persons to live independently.

Citing improved security conditions in some parts of the vast archipelago, Kalla said the refugees could now return home.

The minister said the central government was committed to resolving the refugee problem as soon as possible.

Of nearly 1.2 million people forced to become refugees in 2001, only about 100,000 of them are still living in makeshift camps in various parts of the country, according to the government.

However, several international aid groups put the number of refugees in Indonesia at almost one million.

Kalla warned that refugees refusing to leave their camps by the January deadline would not receive food allowances any more from the government.

He regretted the fact that many refugees insisted on staying in the camps merely to obtain their daily allowances as some of them had already obtained jobs.

A number of conflicts have calmed down around Indonesia since President Megawati Soekarnoputri came to power last year, replacing president Abdurrahman Wahid.

The government signed a peace deal on Dec. 9 with the rebel Free Aceh Movement to end a conflict that has killed around 12,000 people since the 1970s and displaced thousands more. The deal has reduced, but not stopped, the bloodshed.

Three years of sectarian fighting between Christians and Muslims in the eastern islands of Maluku and in the Central Sulawesi town of Poso has largely stopped since peace accords were signed earlier this year. The conflicts had claimed at least 9,000 lives.

Peace has also returned to Central Kalimantan, which had seen sporadic bouts of bloody ethnic fighting between indigenous Dayaks and migrants from Madura island in East Java until last year. Hundreds of Madurese settlers were killed and thousands of others fled.

Meanwhile, some 250,000 refugees fled, or were forced to flee, East Timor after it voted to secede from Indonesia in August 1999. Most of them have since returned home.

About 17,000 families, making a total of 105,227 East Timorese refugees, are still languishing in camps across East Nusa Tenggara, according to the government.

The government spent Rp 6.61 billion (US$743,325) on funding the repatriation of 9,010 East Timorese refugee families between Nov. 16 last year and Dec. 23, 2002.

Each family received Rp 750,000 (US$84) in food and transport allowances for those willing to return to East Timor.