Tsunami Recovery: The Pace Picks Up in Indonesia

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November 30, 2005—More than 25,000 houses are expected to be completed by the end of this year in Aceh for survivors of last year’s tsunami, which devastated the region.

That’s according to the World Bank’s Country Director for Indonesia, Andrew Steer.

“That will be a good achievement,” Steer says. “That was roughly the target at the very beginning of this year. “

Steer describes the pace of the reconstruction effort in Aceh to date as “good and bad.”

 “It’s certainly not as good as we would have hoped. But if you compare it alongside other natural disasters over the last 10 or 20 years, it’s probably ahead of the game,” he says.

“The sad fact is that most natural disasters see rehabilitation and reconstruction processes much more slowly than has been anticipated.

	Laying of the first foundation stone for a new home in Gampong Baru, Aceh

 “We were quite discouraged over the summer – in the June - July period – because we weren’t seeing the reconstruction come to life. That was six months after the tsunami and we were all getting quite frustrated. Why is the reconstruction program not starting?” 

Steer says it was a combination of factors which slowed the reconstruction process down. One of these was funds from donors. While the funds were pledged in January, parliamentary processes often meant the money was not approved by donor governments until the middle of the year.

Another factor he says was the government processes within Indonesia.

“Their parliament did not approve the reconstruction budget for 2005 for the tsunami until June. The budget for relief had been going well.”

However he says in recent months, the pace of the reconstruction effort had picked up.

“So far the non government organizations have been financing most of the houses. And now the programs from the major official donors are starting to kick in.

The Sound of Hammers

“Now there is a lot of life. Most villages have the sounds of hammers.”

And while 25,000 homes are expected to be completed by the end of this year, Steer says the need for more housing remains great.

“More than 100,000 houses are needed and that means throughout 2006, more than a 1,000 houses a week will need to be finished. That’s a very ambitious job.” 

It’s in the provision of housing that Steer acknowledges what he calls one of the “miss-steps” in the international planning for reconstruction.

“One of the real weaknesses has been transitional housing,” he says.

 “The view had been that been – wrongly as it turns out – that those affected could go straight from the camps into permanent housing.

“Now we knew that the permanent housing was not going to be complete by the end of this year. We knew that the best you could do was 30,000 houses in the first year and we knew there were nearly 500,000 people that were internally displaced, because of the tsunami.

“But I think that non government organizations and the United Nations felt that they didn’t want to invest a lot of money in temporary housing, since it might divert their efforts to build permanent housing, and so they did not.”

“So as a result there still are today up to 60,000 people in tents and barracks, and with the rainy season, this is not good.”

	The rebuilding process is giving local people the chance to work again

New Temporary Housing

That now means an aggressive effort is underway to build new temporary housing – with the aim of moving the tens of thousands of people still in tents into other accommodation by the new year.

Steer says in many cases, the new temporary accommodation will be located in the places where villages once stood – allowing people to supervise the building of their new permanent homes.

And he says the first big chance of people earning an income will come through that reconstruction process.

In line with that, he says the Bank and other organizations have been involved in training programs to prepare people for the reconstruction – with locals being given training in plumbing, carpentering, and other skilled trades.

Steer says the Bank has also been helping to finance land titling for all those who lost their land titles in the tsunami, and for those who never had formal land titles.

After extensive community consultation, Steer says he expects land titles will be provided for 600,000 parcels of land through Aceh.

Watching the Water

“We’ve also had a very large team working on infrastructure, as we’re concerned some of the existing flood protection will give way during the rainy season,” he says.

“This will be the first rainy season since the tsunami and we’ve been working with the Government of Indonesia to develop an emergency program to hire contracting companies to be on standby to solve problems as they come up and fix up bridges which were put up in the early months after the tsunami.

“We have to watch the levees to make sure there are no breaches, otherwise we could see breaks in transportation routes, leaving hundreds of villages cut off.”

Steer says financing has also been arranged for the hiring of a number of special ships that can operate in rough waters and can land on a beach, complete with trucks onboard for delivering building materials.