Workers fleeing East Timor seek new jobs in NTT

KUPANG, East Nusa Tenggara (JP): More than half of 10,000 civil servants fleeing troubled East Timor have registered themselves for new jobs in this province, a local official said on Wednesday.

Provincial authorities spokeswoman Nani Kosapilawan said the government opened registration posts here and in the province's other towns of Atambua, Belu, Kalabahi, Kefamenanu, SoE and Larantuka.

"No less than 5,073 of them have said they wanted to live permanently in this province," said Nani.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare and Poverty Eradication Haryono Suyono assured all civil servants from East Timor that they would receive their monthly salary from the government.

The minister did not say, however, when they would receive their salary or how the government would arrange the payment system.

Meanwhile, East Timor's ministry of education and culture office head Dimpudus said at least 11,000 teachers from the province were evacuated to East Nusa Tenggara, including 7,500 primary school teachers.

Dimpudus said the ministry allocated Rp 400 million (US$50,000) to finance the teachers' evacuation. Teachers from East Nusa Tenggara received Rp 200,000 and teachers from West Nusa Tenggara and Bali received Rp 500,000 respectively. Teachers from Sumatra, and Irian Jaya were given Rp 1 million each.

"This money is only for evacuation. We will pay other allowances soon," Dimpudus told Antara.

A junior high school teacher, Nurhayati, 34, said she worked more than 10 years in Dili. She said she had to leave the town as the situation continued to worsen there. She planned to return to her hometown in Bandung, West Java.

Hery Nan, 58, said he is a retired police officer and he wanted to spend the rest of his life in East Timor with his family. However, after rioters burned down and looted his house in Dili, he decided to escape from the troubled province.

Meanwhile, Toni Psanner of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the humanitarian organization continued talks on humanitarian aid delivery with the head of the Security Restoration Operation Command in East Timor, Maj. Gen. Kiki Syahnakri, in Dili.

Psanner said on Wednesday that Kiki assured the ICRC could resume its activities in a limited scope while bigger operations could slowly start as soon as the situation improves.

"The meeting is aimed at obtaining as much information as possible on the ground to look at possibilities of taking up our humanitarian activities there," Psanner told The Jakarta Post.

Kiki said that the activities could be resumed, but warned the humanitarian officials to act very carefully.

"The commander gives a green light and security assurance for a limited scope of activities and bigger operations will start slowly after the security situation allows us to do so," he said.

Kiki told the Post that his command had delivered 13 tons of rice to refugees sheltering in Dili's outskirts of Dare and Motaulun. He said his troops were met with gunshots in Dare before a Catholic priest, Father Fransiscus Tan, emerged to take the military's humanitarian mission to the refugees.

Separately, the British government announced on Wednesday that it would provide US$5 million to help people get their lives back to normal in East Timor.

"The UK will provide material and logistics support to facilitate the restoration of the functioning of the UN mission in East Timor as soon as security conditions permit," the British Embassy said in a statement.

Saparinah Sadli, chairwoman of the official National Commission on Violence Against Women, which is monitoring the refugees, criticized the government for "a lack of the sense of the crisis" regarding the refugees issue.

"They're responding to the situation with a program designed for normal times," she said, citing the resettlement program promised by authorities to refugees. For example, the red tape needed in the procurement of medical aid must be abolished regarding the East Timor refugees, she said.

The commission had not managed to collect data on internally displaced people in East Timor given the absence of contacts, Saparinah said, "and the point is that all of them are in danger".

"Does the military have any control over what they started?" she said, referring to military involvement in the militia.

Saparinah said the military must urgently state that humanitarian workers be allowed access "because they too were killed". She cited the deaths of a number of priests. (yac/emf/anr/prb/lem)