Home Affairs Minister pushes optimisation of temporary shelters for refugees living in tents

Jakarta – The Minister of Home Affairs, who also serves as the Head of the Task Force for Accelerating Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (PRR) in the Aftermath of Disasters in Sumatra, Muhammad Tito Karnavian, has urged the optimisation of temporary housing (huntara) for refugees who are still living in tents.

Tito explained that refugee management can be improved by maximizing the huntara already in place, including relocating refugees from tents to other sites with surplus huntara capacity. ‘What’s in the tents can be moved to other sites that have surplus huntara. I see the trick as that,’ he said in a statement in Jakarta on Friday.

He delivered this while leading a ministerial-level Coordination Meeting (Rakor) on accelerating refugee handling after the disaster in Sumatra, held in hybrid form from the central office of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Nevertheless, Tito emphasised that the government’s current top priority is refugees still living in tents. Refugees occupying other facilities such as government buildings or meunasah (a traditional Acehnese building) can be addressed in the next phase.

‘If those in tents are the people’s expectation, from regional heads, those in tents are the priority,’ he said.

He noted that some areas still require additional huntara construction because of the large number of refugees. One area of concern is Aceh Tamiang, which is still assessed as needing more huntara to accommodate refugees. ‘Tamiang has quite a large number, and the huntara is indeed lacking,’ he added.

Moreover, Tito also asked for a clearer mapping of the huntara developments from various funding sources. This is important so that the government has accurate data on how many huntara have been built and how many still need to be built. He said such data is required as material for a government report to the President on progress in handling and recovering post-disaster in Sumatra.

This aligns with Presidential Decree (Keppres) No. 1 of 2026 on the Task Force for Accelerating Rehabilitation and Reconstruction after Natural Disasters in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra provinces. ‘So we also know how much BNPB built, how much Danantara built, and how much the Ministry of Public Works built. Later when we report to the President, because every two months according to Keppres we report to the President,’ he said.