Tsunami aid for Aceh flowing smoothly: UN

Tsunami aid for Aceh flowing smoothly: UN

Reuters, Jakarta

The United Nations said on Friday international aid was flowing
smoothly to tsunami-hit areas of Aceh, denying reports of large
numbers of containers languishing on Indonesian wharfs.

Michael Whiting of the UN Joint Logistics Centre in Aceh, on
the northern tip of Sumatra island, said early blockages were
largely due to the inexperience of many non-government aid groups
that flocked to the region after the Dec. 26 disaster.

"It's well within manageable proportions now," Whiting said.

"Everyone has been extremely cooperative and we are all
focused on the same thing. Get the stuff to the people who need
it as quickly as we can," he told Reuters.

The international community has pledged billions of dollars in
aid to tsunami-hit regions around the Indian Ocean, with the
lion's share going to Indonesia.

Some media reports in recent weeks have pointed to hold ups in
aid delivery.

The elimination of red tape and the prevention of corruption
has been a major concern for donors in the world's fourth most
populous nation.

Whiting, responsible for aid logistics in Sumatra, said that
in April a backlog of some 1,500 containers had built up on the
docks at Medan's main Belawan port, but that as of July 12 there
were only 300 containers of aid, half of which had been there for
only a week.

"Everyone was pointing the finger at the Indonesian
government," Whiting said of the earlier backlog.

"In fact, when I looked into it, they'd done everything they
could to make it work and it pointed more to the lack of logistic
capacity in the NGO community. They didn't know what a bill of
lading was and so on."

At the height of the emergency relief effort, there were more
than 180 non-government aid groups operating in the isolated
Indonesian province.

In Aceh's provincial capital Banda Aceh, the man who leads the
reconstruction of tsunami-hit areas told reporters the government
should also take the blame for aid distribution glitches.

"The bureaucracy is too complicated and the central
government's sense of emergency or sense of crisis is little. We
have received many reports on fundings, but it hasn't arrived
here yet," said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto.