Part2 of 2: Does the master plan for Aceh rehabilitation drive NGOs away?

Daniel Kingsley, Washington DC

The MoF, as a monitoring institution, has not had its position in the monitoring process clearly defined either. The master plan seems to indicate that these tasks will be executed at the end of the flow process. If the flow chart from volume 11 of the master plan is consulted, it can be seen that the MoF is only given the responsibility of "documenting" the execution process of the RRA.

Given the importance of accountability, administrative procedures must be carefully defined for the donors. The MOF should be empowered to implement monitoring processes determined through collaborative decision making between all stakeholders to protect the integrity of the donors and GOI. Other issues that should be considered and weighed in before the project approval process begins include:

O Creation of a working model, that has been tested, for project approvals

O Review of how those models used in the relief phase- such as the UNDP "programs partners model"- have performed

O Clearly establish monitoring processes of the flow of grants and loans from beginning to end

O Transparent authority of regulatory and policy control of the RRA

O An accountability mechanisms for project approval and funds flow.

In the master plan there is a steering committee and board to address the above, but to what degree are these committees empowered and representative of stakeholders? Institutional policy guidelines should focus on accountability and transparency by the donors and the GOI, its staff and institutions.

The RRA has the capacity to manage the donor partnerships according to the master plan, but to do so effectively and transparently requires a cooperative effort with regulatory certainty and not an authoritative hierarchy that will drive donor funding away from Indonesia.

It is reasonable to enforce compliance by the donors to the policy guidelines, just as the agency should be compliant to the stakeholders. Admittedly, this is quite a lot to ask the GOI, and certainly raises nationalistic and sovereignty issues, but is a fact that it is foremost in the minds of the international community as a result of the endemic corruption that has plagued the country for so many years.

A Private Sector Summit on Tsunami Reconstruction was held on May 12 in Washington DC focusing on some of the issues. In that Forum, Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, stated: "What we cannot afford any kind of scandals (and) money going into the wrong direction or into the wrong pockets because we had such unprecedented generosity and such unprecedented needs".

Other officials heading the UN efforts on tsunami reconstruction went on to add that some donors have been reluctant to release funds to tsunami-hit economies because of a lack of firm action plans with guarantees of transparency, officials told the conference. Egeland added that the reconstruction effort is still too slow and that although national governments were taking the lead in the rebuilding process, they should form "effective partnerships with local authorities and international donors".

He urged governments to be transparent in awarding multi- million-dollar reconstruction projects to avoid corruption scandals : "We have to make sure that it is transparent and accountable as can be. "

There are currently clear revisions that should be made in the master plan to impact the international concerns regarding transparency. A few immediate issues:

o Project approval and funding approval processes empowered with regulatory autonomy.

o The MoF to monitor funding flow prior to execution of project review by the agency, as is the case in the on-budget process.

o The MOF and BAPPENAS independent of the Coordinating Ministry policy control in the monitoring and execution processes

At the top, autonomous regulatory control should cover policy, budgets and fiduciary matters and technical approach to project approval and implementation. There can never be complete agreement between the agency implementing the projects in Aceh and all stakeholders, but it should remain independent from the territorial issues that will arise in relation to the various ministries that have overlapping policy and regulatory control of the project sectors.

At the bottom, the most important responsibility should be in the government agencies that support the communities. It is the communities in Aceh must be empowered throughout the process. This is one issue that cannot be easily ignored, nor will it go away.

The local government and communities have a right to review and approve the master plan, and the general consensus is that they have rejected it as non-inclusive. Therefore, until they do approve of the plan, it can be assumed there will be a disconnect between the international donor community that must represent their interests on behalf of the global pool of contributors and the GOI.

The new director himself has addressed this issue, quoted as saying: "I can assure you that we will develop Aceh using a total community participation approach". This is an encouraging sign that the agency is in good hands, but it would be most be conveyed clearly through consensus building efforts to reasonably assure the individual contributors around the world.

This could be conveyed through a concise and transparent master plan that was formerly endorsed by all stakeholders in the reconstruction and rehabilitation process.

The writer is an international development consultant who has worked on Tsunami related reconstruction planning for bilateral and multilateral donors in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. He can be reached at dkingsley@tmiconsulting.com