Refugees want quick freeing of resettlement funds

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

Some 20,000 refugees who fled Aceh and are now living in North Sumatra are demanding resettlement funds from the provincial administration so they can leave the camps.

"We want the provincial administration to distribute the resettlement funds immediately to help the refugees leave the refuge camps and start normal lives.

"We want the government to complete the distribution by the first week of December at the latest. If it fails to meet this deadline we will continue our demonstrations," M. Zaini, coordinator of the refugees, said during a meeting with North Sumatra Governor T. Rizal Nurdin on Wednesday.

The governor received several representatives of the refugees after some 700 refugees demonstrated in front of his office, demanding that he speed up the distribution of the resettlement funds.

According to an agreement signed by the refugees and Minister of Social Affairs Bachtiar Chamsyah in September, the government will provide each refugee family with Rp 8,750,000 (US$972) to help them resettle.

Of the Rp 8,750,000, Rp 5,000,000 is meant to be used for the purchase of a simple house and the remaining Rp 3,500,000 is to be used for the purchase of daily necessities for three months.

The agreement was reached after a number of refugees staged a hunger strike at the provincial legislative building in September.

Some 23,000 families are taking refuge in Langkat, Binjai and Deli Serdang regencies after fleeing Aceh. The refugees, most of whom are originally from Java, North, West and South Sumatra, have received Rp 1,500 and 500 grams of rice per day from the government during their stay in the refuge camps.

The central government hopes to resettle a total of some 1.6 million refugees from across the country by March 2003.

Those in North Sumatra have asked the local social affairs office to speed up the distribution of the resettlement funds to at least 500 families per day, from the current 300 families per day.

So far, only 3,000 of 23,000 families have received their resettlement funds.

However, Zaini said many refugees in Binjai and Langkat were not given the full amount of resettlement funds promised by the central government, and demanded "the governor impose stiff sanctions against officials siphoning off resettlement funds".

Last week police in Binjai arrested R. Sormin, an employee at the prosecutor's office, M. Yusuf Nasution from the social affairs office, and Salim, a staff member of the Binjai district chief. The three were charged with siphoning off Rp 165.5 million from the resettlement funds for 277 families in the regency.