Kebumen prepares land to relocate landslide victims

Agus Maryono, The Jakarta Post, Kebumen

Several hundred families left homeless after recent floods and landslides wreaked havoc in West Java's Kebumen regency, were to be relocated, a local official said.

Kebumen Regent Rustriningsih said the local government, in cooperation with state-owned forest company PT Perhutani, had prepared a 100-hectare land plot for the relocation of an estimated 600 families.

Rustriningsih said here on Wednesday that the local government, using central government funds, would develop several hundred half-completed simple homes on the land for the landslide victims.

"The local administration will gain Rp 2 billion in assistance from the central government. Rp 1.5 billion will be used to build half-completed houses while the remaining Rp 500 million will be used to develop public facilities and roads," she said.

She added that the half-completed houses were expected to be completed by the new residents.

Rustriningsih reiterated that the local administration would continue to persuade the victims to move to the housing compound because it was impossible for them to go back to their villages in the landslide-prone mountainous areas.

She said the relocation project would begin in January 2002 and was expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Besides the landslides that destroyed hundreds of houses in several subdistricts in the regency, the flood has also inundated thousands of houses and damaged hundreds of thousands of hectares of paddy field in Cilacap, Banyumas and other parts of the regency.

The deluge, which has not been declared a national disaster, has caused an estimated Rp 20 billion in material losses to the local people.

The local administration is planning to deepen the Telomoyo River in the regency and build dikes to prevent or limit future flooding.

Rustriningsih said more and more local people had taken refuge following continuous rain over the last four days.

Samsul Bachri, chief of the social affairs ministry office in Kebumen, called on local people not to slash trees in forested areas in the regency because it would result in increased landslides and flooding.

He said the local administration had detected eight subdistricts prone to landslides and flooding and they were located in mountainous and mountainous areas.