Tsunami impoverishes one million more

Tsunami impoverishes one million more

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post/Bandung

Redoubled efforts will be required to reduce poverty following
the Aceh and North Sumatra tidal waves as the disaster has added
about one million more to the already massive number of people
living from hand to mouth in the country.

The deputy to the coordinating minister for people's welfare
responsible for poverty alleviation, Djoharis Lubis, said here on
Friday that the estimate of one million additional poor had been
drawn up by the Asian Development Bank.

According to the Central Statistics Bureau, the number of poor
people declined by 1 percent in 2004 compared to the previous
year, with the number of poor people standing at 36.2 million, or
16.6 percent, at the end of the year.

He said the reconstruction efforts in the tsunami-hit regions
would need to be quick so as to provide employment for the
survivors.

Apart from a speedy recovery in the tsunami-hit areas, steps
also needed to be taken in each provinces to create more jobs,
such as the fostering of small, labor intensive businesses. In
addition, the banking sector needed to lower interest rates for
small businesses.

According to Harry Hikmat, head of the business promotion sub-
directorate at the Ministry of Social Affairs's directorate of
social assistance, Aceh had the fifth highest number of poor
people in the country.

He said that based on the ministry's 2004 data, 25 percent of
Acehnese lived below the poverty line.

The provinces with the highest incidences of poverty were
Papua on 44 percent, East Nusa Tenggara on 36 percent, West Nusa
Tenggara on 30 percent and Maluku on 26 percent.

The ministry, Harry said, had three strategies for dealing
with the poverty problem in Aceh, including the involvement of
people in infrastructure construction projects and providing easy
access to investment funds for small businesses.

The ministry was currently taking an inventory of the tsunami
victims employment needs.

Hikmat said that of the around 55,000 displaced people living
in shelters, 10 percent had gone back to work, while 20 percent
were trying to recover what they could from their previous
sources of livelihood, such as small repair shops. "But 70
percent of them have completely lost their sources of income."