Home Affairs Minister Admits Sumatra Disaster Recovery Cannot Be Completed in a Year

Minister of Home Affairs Tito Karnavian has admitted that recovery from the impacts of hydrometeorological disasters in several areas of Sumatra some time ago cannot be completed within one year.

He said the areas affected by the disaster were extremely extensive.

“To be honest, the scale of the impact requires time — it cannot be resolved in just one year. We are already nine months in, from November to this August. In nine months, it is impossible for everything to be fully sorted; I cannot guarantee it will be,” said Tito at a press conference at the Bakom RI office in Jakarta on Wednesday (5/8).

Tito explained that the problems encountered in the field were diverse. He cited North Aceh as an example, where the town centre appeared unaffected, but the problems became highly complex once one went into the interior regions.

“Timber is piled up, houses are destroyed, poles have collapsed, schools have been struck by logs,” he said.

Nevertheless, Tito said the government was continuing to make maximum efforts to resolve the problem.

He also outlined a number of achievements the government had made in addressing the situation.

Tito reported, for instance, that all hospitals were now operational.

As for schools, of 4,922 affected buildings, 4,834 had already returned to their original school premises.

“We acknowledge there are emergency classes, because they are using existing government buildings — not ideal for schools, but the priority is to keep things moving. There are still tents — why? Generally, those in tents are those whose buildings were completely destroyed or swept away along the riverbanks. So we need land for relocation, and finding land is also sometimes not easy,” he said.