INDONESIA Almost six years after the devastating 2004 tsunami, which killed more than 130,000 people in Aceh province, most victims have recovered from physical and psychological issues to resume their daily routines in a new environment.
In the worst-hit coastal Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar regencies, survivors live in houses and facilities built by the international community. They said they don’t want terrible memories to haunt their lives and hope to build a better future.
Hasnanda Putra, a 36-year-old resident of the devastated Blang Oi hamlet in Meuraxa district, which lost its population in the disaster, said people have been able to accept the loss of their loved ones.
“We are the offspring of people who were killed in the tsunami. We were away from the hamlet when the disaster struck,” he told The Jakarta Post here on Wednesday.
Hasnanda and his wife were in Malaysia visiting his uncle when the 9.8 magnitude earthquake that triggered the monstrous tsunami that hit Aceh and nearby Nias Islands on Dec. 26, 2004. The disaster killed at least 210,000 people in the region including Sri Lanka and India, displaced hundreds of thousands more and wiped out buildings and infrastructure in Aceh and Nias.
A civil servant at the Banda Aceh municipality administration, Hasnanda’s wife lost nine members of her family.
With Rp 53 million (US$5,800) in financial assistance from the Multi Donor Funds (MDF), they built a new house on a 125 square-meter plot of land in the hamlet.
“We built this house with an additional Rp 60 million loaned from the bank in the hope our lost loved ones would be pleased,” he said.
Amiruddin Asyik, a resident of a new housing areas in Kahju, which was constructed with the help of the MDF, said his family was happy to stay in the new place and would move only when he retires in 2015.
“Kahju was levelled, but now we have a completely new community with smooth roads and a better mosque,” said.
Amiruddin, a government employee, lost his wife and four teenage children in the disaster.
Thousands of quake-proof houses, schools, mosques and government offices have been built with new designs in the city.
Supervised by the Aceh and Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR), more than 150,000 modest houses, dozens of hospitals, ports, bridges and roads were built. Many others have also been repaired over the past five-and-a-half years.
Balukiyah Ruddin, head of Lamdingin village, praised the MDF-funded reconstruction projects, which involved local communities from the planning to the construction stages.
“Unlike BRR’s projects, the MDF have allowed residents to build their houses according to their needs.
Construction standards were set by donor countries and the entire process has been closely supervised to ensure the aid’s goals,” he said.
MDF has been entrusted to manage $685 million from 15 donor countries and institutions, including the EU, the US, the Word Bank and the Asian Development Bank to support reconstruction and rehabilitation projects in 14 regencies and 41 districts in the province.
The World Bank through the Community-based Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Program (Rekompak) managed $85 million and Rp 25.6 billion from the state budget to build more than 7,900 new houses, rehabilitate more than 6,900 others and construct 133 kilometers of roads, 142 kilometers of drains and 158 wells.
The World Bank-funded reconstruction and rehabilitation projects will be handed over to the Indonesian government here on Thursday.
Tsunami in memori
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