Women key to new Aceh: Kuntoro Mangkusubroto

Women key to new Aceh: Kuntoro Mangkusubroto

Samantha Brown, Agence France-Presse/Jakarta

Women will be the key to a new Aceh that is open and progressive,
the head of the agency tasked with overseeing the rebuilding in
the tsunami-hit Indonesian province said Monday as he defended
the speed of reconstruction there.

Some 16,500 houses out of a 120,000 targeted for Aceh's
570,000 displaced people have been completed to date, with a
further 15,500 slated to be finished this year, said Kuntoro
Mangkusubroto, head of the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction
Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR).

More than a total of 30,000 houses is "a big achievement", he
told a press briefing in Jakarta, "because the national capacity
of Indonesia to build public houses is not more than 60,000
houses. So if you compare with the capacity, it's up to or close
to capacity.

"But if you compare to the demand or the need, then it's only
one quarter of it. So we need some time to finish it... We have
to try, we have to try hard."

Some 67,000 people remain in tents and 30,000 live in barracks
in the staunchly Muslim province, with the rest staying with
relatives, but the BRR aims to have everyone in permanent houses
by mid-2007.

Next year 78,000 houses are targeted to be built, said
Mangkusubroto, who has been praised for his no-nonsense approach
and tough anti-corruption stance in graft-prone Indonesia.

"The challenges are huge. How do you distribute materials to
the western part of Aceh? Roads destroyed, harbors destroyed and
the monsoon is coming. Well, let's work hard," he said.

The tsunami last December destroyed more than 800 kilometers
of coastline, killing or leaving missing more than 168,000 people
in Aceh, destroying livelihoods and flattening crucial
infrastructure and houses.

Responding to complaints by many survivors that NGOs had
promised them homes they have failed to deliver, Mangkusubroto
said that he had surveyed who was doing what, and planned to name
and shame those not pulling their weight.

"I just got the list of NGOs. I'm still finalizing it," he
said.

"I can say that in general the smaller NGOs that pledged
houses, less than 500 -- on the average 100 or 200 -- they
actually are the performers... Those who pledge more than 1,000,
they don't deliver."

Some 480 NGOs are operating in the province, "locals and
internationals, the big ones and small ones, the serious ones and
not-so serious ones," he said.

But rebuilding, Mangkusubroto said, was not just about
infrastructure.

"We want to transform Aceh to become an open, aggressive,
progressive society -- not isolated and not only looking to the
past," he said.

"So our concept in transforming the society is through women
and children... Every village should have a women's center, a
physical thing."

The BRR chief said that the content of the centers would be
"anything that will open women's vision towards the future of
Aceh", adding that when it comes to change, "women are much more
strategic than men."

One way to help them tap into their own power would be for
microfinance projects to favor them when they approach with ideas
for cottage industries they can run themselves, but he said no
formal quota was planned.

Aceh is entering a new era of peace, after separatist rebels
signed a deal with the government in August after nearly three
decades of conflict that left some 15,000 people dead, mostly
civilians. The tsunami was a key catalyst in getting both sides
to the negotiating table.

The BRR has a 7.1 billion-dollar budget to spend throughout
its five-year mandate.