Samsidar, an Acehnese with integrity

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.