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."