Oxfam wants to help restore the livelihood of the Acehnese

International NGOs have been flocking to Aceh to help the victims of the tsunami. One of them is Oxfam, which has been focusing on providing clean water and sanitation to refugees in Aceh. The Jakarta Post's Riyadi Suparno talked to Oxfam's Indonesia country program manager David MacDonald about its current and future operation in Aceh. The following is the excerpt of the conversation:

Question: What has Oxfam been doing here in Aceh so far?

Answer: We are providing tanks, storage facilities for clean water and public health education. All of these are provided to help people who suffer just to reach some solid foundation on which they can start rebuild their lives. We are now covering Aceh Besar, but we are also working down in Meulaboh. What we are doing here in Banda Aceh is that we are providing storage facilities for clean water which is just coming from the Australian Defense Force.

And then, we are tankering it to camps and keeping it at storage facilities. So, we have some tanks with capacity of 11,000 liters to 20,000 liters that we set up at camps, working to make sure that the people have adequate supplies of drinking water.

In Meulaboh, we're also working to rehabilitate the water tank supply, which has been badly damaged by the earthquake. So, we are repairing the pump station, which can produce clean water that can be tankered around the town. At the moment, the water cannot go through the piping system because the system is very badly damaged.

How many camps and people are there, benefiting form your service?

The number is increasing daily. We are working at six camps, and this is increasing rapidly this week. In terms of the number of people, we are assisting now over 20,000, and over the next five days, we are looking at more than 50,000 people.

How did you assemble your resources, both people and money, for your mission here?

This is Oxfam Great Britain's initiative. We are working with the other Oxfams. We also deploy some of our existing staff. In addition, we have some partners to work with in West Timor, and they are sending the staff here. We've got the people, from the UN on the coordination side.

The money Oxfam has raised for this initiative is coming from the UK public. Firstly, I think everyone throughout the world has been enormously touched by what has happened and want to help in some way and want to provide some assistance. And we are saying in our appeal that the best way to help is providing money to the agencies which have the skills and ability to make a different on the ground.

So, in the UK we received 5.7 million pounds in that appeal. And there is also another appeal that we are part of the Disaster Emergency Committee appeal in the UK and that raised a total amount of over 100 million pounds.

What are the main challenges you've found during your operation in the past two weeks?

The coordination on the movement of goods. The coordination side has been challenging in many ways, you know whether we are arranging goods from the airport or whether we are airlifting goods to Banda Aceh. It took less time for us to get goods from Oxford (Britain) to Medan than getting goods from Medan to Banda Aceh.

When our first truck arrived here, for example, for three days, no one knew where it was. It disappeared because the recording system was not as strong as it should have been. We now have found it of course and we now have been taking the stuff down to Meulaboh from that truck.

The coordination of our own such as who does what, when it comes is quite haphazard. From our own experience, we know that if you provide water, you have to go back and provide it the next day. You can't do it for one day and stop and start again. People become relying on it. So, when we are providing water one day, we have to build each day on what we've done the day before.

What about the security situation or the continuing armed conflict here?

We were very pleased and encouraged to see how quickly that the Indonesian government was able to grant access to the international agencies following the disaster. I think it shows a genuine commitment on their side to be using all means possible to assist the population here.

We had been operational here before the declaration of the martial law (in May 2003), and at that time, our office and international staff had to leave.

As far as the security situation goes now, we do not feel that our ability to operate here is constrained in any way, and it's something we monitor very, very closely. I understand that it's something that's changing from day to day.

Certainly, we are aware of the tension that still exists in the province, and we make sure that all incoming staff is aware of the history of that so that they can understand the environment that we are working in.

The international community, the Indonesian government and the military have to work hard to maintain that security and maintain that operational space that we need.

Do you also involve the military in your operation, especially in areas like Meulaboh?

We make the military aware that we are there. We are discussing with them what we are doing, but we don't directly involve the military in the delivery of our assistance. We have to make sure that we maintain our own operation on neutrality and impartiality. And in working in an area like Aceh, it's very important that the beneficiary, the people you are helping, sees you as being neutral.

How long will you be here to help the Acehnese?

This is long term. We had been here before the declaration of the martial law. And well before this disaster, in fact, we had been talking to people on how to reestablish our presence here. This is the area that we recognize as one of the poorest and one of the most vulnerable in Indonesia.

And now it will take three to five years to start rebuild this. So, our programs here include a three-to-five year intervention, starting with the water and sanitation sector and we will move to supporting people reestablish their livelihood. Then, we will move to health, education services if possible. And that's for a longer term.