Samsidar, an Acehnese with integrity

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor/Jakarta

"What bothers me immensely now is that the Acehnese whose houses were untouched by the devastating earthquake and tsunami, do not show a sense of solidarity with their own people," complains Ir. Samsidar, herself an Acehnese, who heads the board of RPuK.

She is also a commissioner at the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan). She will now hand over her post of secretary general that she has held for the past year.

In Banda Aceh, the cost of renting a house has gone up by 500 percent to 900 percent, with house owners getting rid of their old tenants to be able to lease their houses to foreign relief agencies, leaving locals -- students and aid workers among others -- virtually on the street.

Samsidar is deeply disappointed with these people and their materialistic goals -- in Islam it is taught that one should not enrich oneself at the cost of others. She feels ashamed that such people, themselves Acehnese, show so little sense of solidarity. Perhaps influential Acehnese people should do something about this.

On the other hand, some people are of the opinion that foreign relief institutions have a moral obligation as well to prevent the inflation of rental rates.

"They should not rent houses at such prices and contribute to a total distortion of the market. Maybe they should use knock down or temporary shelters or find other solutions." This is just one of the problems now emerging in the field.

Meanwhile RPuK, whose lease has also expired in Banda Aceh, continues to help meet the needs of selected refugees in Banda Aceh, and Lhokseumawe and camps within a radius of more than 40 kilometers from Lhokseumawe.

With the overwhelming national and international response to the tsunami disaster in Aceh, and the flood of goods and helping hands, the haunting question remains whether all that aid is reaching its target.

While many are actually stretching themselves beyond their limits to help out in emergency response efforts, Samsidar with her team of young women working at RPuK, or the Tim Relawan Perempuan untuk Kemanusiaan (Women Volunteer Team for Humanity), deserves special mention.

Not only are they all from Aceh, but they have consistently been bringing relief to victims of the armed conflict in the beleaguered province since 1999. What is more, these young women aged between 27 years and 40 years, many of whom have a university degree, work with an integrity of character that is one of a kind.

Their way of working may appear energy intensive, but it's a consequence of the need to make sure that the supplies reach the targeted people. To that end, they personally take care of distributing kacang hijau (mung beans), eggs, milk, sugar, (sometimes rice), underwear, and mosquito nets for babies, post natal necessities and women's sanitary towels to the refugees.

In doing so, they often have to face local and government committees who wish to distribute the aid, but the 14 young women remain firm. They hand over the goods in person, and do data collection at the same time, thus obtaining a fairly good overview of how many men, women and children are in the camps they visit.

Samsidar reveals that many are now leaving the camps, to either live with their families or return to their places of origin. As a result, these families who have hardly enough to feed themselves, need supplies as well.

Those returning to their hometowns or villages face the risk of not receiving official supplies. Some refugees are returning to their place of origin and are taking the initiative to set up temporary accommodation for their families. They refuse to go to the place of relocation provided by the government, which is often far from their original places, despite offering adequate employment and education opportunities for the future.

So far, RPuK has been preoccupied with an emergency response, from initially 25,000 refugees, 10,000 remain in refugee camps, while others have returned to various coastal communities and families who are taking in refugees. But they are not limiting themselves to such relief alone, and are thinking of strategies to build new livelihood projects.

Traditional values of mutual help and decision making within the community itself should be maintained in any form of assistance, says Samsidar who keeps a low profile and is unassuming in spite of her important position.

A person of high integrity, Samsidar who graduated from the agricultural department of Syah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, gave up her position as a lecturer of agriculture at Gajah Putih University in Takengon in Central Aceh.

She is averse to any personal gain, staying in a makeshift space in the office of RPuK amid the piles of boxes of supplies, with no privacy guaranteed. As the head of the board she gets no compensation for the immense work she is doing.

The others in RPuK only have the benefit of a meager compensation. Donor agencies do not value our professionalism, we only fit in the category of "overhead costs", she asserts.

The question arises: How much longer can they carry on? Perhaps, now is the moment to make groundbreaking changes.