Workers fleeing East Timor seek new jobs in NTT

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)