SBY gives two weeks to clean up Aceh

SBY gives two weeks to clean up Aceh

The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

The Indonesia Military (TNI) and body retrievers sped up work on Monday following an instruction from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to expedite the cleaning up of Aceh from rubble and flotsam.

Two excavators and several dump trucks clean Setuy River, which cuts across Jl. Teuku Umar (see photo) and flows through the capital of Banda Aceh. The military managed to retrieve 11 decomposed bodies from the river when they started work at about 10 a.m.

In nearby business district on Jl. Pangeran Diponegoro, relief workers from Yemen and North Maluku worked hand-in-hand to clean up the damaged area, retrieving more bodies from the rubble.

Head of the disaster mitigating task force in Aceh, Alwi Shihab, set on Monday a deadline to clean up the province within two weeks.

Among the relief workers were locals who joined in the search for more dead bodies as well as those who took their belongings from their houses or stores.

On the walls of houses in the area heading to Ulee Lheu village, which is the worst village damaged by the calamity, there were written messages in red paint informing that the families had survived, but there was no more information on their whereabouts.

Meanwhile, Kasmaryati, 53, was still looking for her son Rudiwin Asura, 29, and four-year-old grandson, Altap Ruwaldo Patikara. Karmaryati said she had found the bodies of her daughter-in-law, granddaughter and housemaid. The only survivor in Banda Aceh was her 19-year-old daughter, Agrifina, who she took to her house in Takengon, Bireuen, which is about a six-hour trip from the capital.

"I'll keep looking for them ... I believe they're safe somewhere," she said. (JP/Ruslan Sangadji)