New body to continue Aceh projects

Erwida Maulia, THE JAKARTA POST, JAKARTA | Sat, 02/14/2009 9:57 AM  

Helping Aceh and Nias: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (right) talks with Canadian Ambassador to Indonesia John Holmes (left) and BRR chief Kuntoro Mangkusubroto (center) in Jakarta on Friday during an exhibition on recovery efforts. JP/R. Berto Wedhatama

The government has unveiled its plan to form a new agency to pick up where the post-tsunami Aceh and Nias reconstruction agency (BRR) left off. 

The government would also continue supervising Aceh reconstruction programs after the BRR ceases operations April 16. 

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Friday he had signed a decree ending the four-year term of the Agency for Reconstruction and Rehabilitation for Aceh and Nias. 

The decree also stipulates recovery programs in the two post-reconstruction areas would fall on the shoulders of state ministries and local authorities. 

“To guarantee the continuation of reconstruction and rehabilitation programs which have already been implemented, and to ensure the synchronization and harmonization of development  activities, the government will establish a new reconstruction agency for Aceh and Nias,” Yudhoyono told the opening ceremony of the two-day Coordination Forum for Aceh and Nias IV at the Jakarta Convention Center.  

“With this agency, we expect the next developments in the two areas will be integrated, rapidly implemented and sustainable,” he added. 

The President said the operation of the new body, due to be led by the  Aceh and North Sumatra governors, would have to maintain the principles of good governance as laid out by the BRR and its partners. 

“I am asking people who will run this body not to breach clean, transparent and accountable principles of management. We have spent a lot on these recovery programs – about Rp 22 trillion (US$1.85 billion) from the Indonesian government alone, before even mentioning financial support from donor countries. 

“It would be a pity if the continuation does not run well,” Yudhoyono warned. 

He said the central government would provide support for the Aceh and North Sumatra administrations to continue the recovery programs, while supervising the new body to ensure it stays on the right track. 

The President praised the BRR for “successfully” doing its job in Aceh and Nias in the four years since the two regions were ravaged by huge tsunami and an earthquake  in 2004 and 2005, respectively. 

He also said what the agency has done could set a good standard for the management of relief activities in other disaster-struck areas. 

BRR head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto reported his agency had collected $7.2 billion for recovery projects in Aceh and Nias, including $2.1 billion from the Indonesian government. 

He said 93 percent had been  channeled to many projects, including the construction of 134,000 housing units, 3,600 kilometers of roads, and 1,400 schools and training centers. 

Kuntoro ensured the accountability of the BRR management, citing good reviews by the Supreme Audit Agency for its 2007 financial report and by the State Ministry for Administrative Reforms for its work performance in 2006 and 2007. 

“If you visit Aceh and Nias now, you will see the significant progress we’ve made.... You will see that people’s lives are improving; they are far better off than they were before. 

“This would have been impossible without the hard work of over 500 national and international organizations representing more than 50 countries. Therefore, I bestow my highest appreciation on you all,” Kuntoro said at the same event.

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Images of Aceh Earthquake 9.2 /Tsunami Disaster December 2004

President opens conference of Aceh and Nias coordination forum

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono officially opened a conference of the Aceh and Nias Coordination Forum at the Jakarta Convention Center here on Friday. 

During the conference, the Aceh and Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) presented its accountability since its operation in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami. 

The mandate of the Aceh and Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency will be over on April 16, 2009. 

BRR Chief Kuntoro Mangkusubroto in his speech said that in the Forum he would report all progresses achieved and programs prepared to support Aceh and Nias to enter a sustainable development stage. 

"We would like to report that out of all pledged funds amounting to US$7.2 billion, including US$2.1 billion from the Indonesian government, 93 percent or US$6.7 billion have been delivered to Aceh and Nias to finance various projects which have been completed currently," he said. 

BRR had completed the constructions of about 134,000 houses, and 3,600 km long roads, he said. 

In the economic field, a paddy harvesting was conducted in Bireun, Aceh, 15 months after the deadly tsunami. 

In the education sector, more than 1,400 school buildings had been constructed and some 40,000 teachers had joined training courses, he said. 

According to BRR`s data, the tsunami which devastated Aceh and Nias on December 26, 2004, destroyed 120,000 houses, damaged 70,000 others, and devastated 14 airports, 114 medical facilities, and 2,000 schools. 

The natural disaster also killed 2,500 teachers, and damaged 3,000 km long roads, 120 bridges, 20,000 hectares of fish ponds, 60,000 hectares of rice fields, and 1,052 government office buildings. 

During the reconstruction period, some 133,903 houses were built, 1,047 medical facilities were developed, and 1,488 school buildings were constructed. 

BRR had also coordinated training courses for 39,438 teachers, and constructions of 3,585 km long roads, 273 bridges, 12 airports, 20 seaports, 3,193 places of worship, and 987 government office buildings.

BRR Points Way to Clean Dealing

The Jakarta Globe, Nivell Rayda, February 7, 2009 

The Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, or BRR, announced on Thursday that a total of 129 companies previously engaged in local reconstruction projects had been blacklisted by the agency over the past four years. 

BRR head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto said his agency found that some of the companies won their contracts by bribing local officials, while others had performed poorly and appeared unable to deliver on the terms of their contracts. 

The blacklisting, he said, was based on public complaints. 

“So far, we have received 913 complaints involving 470 government reconstruction projects,” Kuntoro said, adding that 27 cases later ended in convictions, while the rest were still being investigated by police. 

Sixty percent of the companies were involved in housing projects for people who lost their homes in the 2004 tsunami, while the rest dealt with infrastructure and economic-facility projects. 

“This is how we prevented corruption in the reconstruction projects,” Kuntoro said. “We had to show contractors we meant business in fighting corruption.” 

The former energy and mineral resources minister distanced the BRR’s central office from the irregularities. “The transactions in question happened between BRR’s local work units and contractors and suppliers,” he said. 

Kuntoro said that unlike a number of other agencies and ministries, the BRR automatically revoked the questionable tenders and opened fresh bids as soon as irregularities were uncovered. The rapid termination of the contracts helped prevent more than Rp 715 billion ($61.5 million) in potential losses to the state, he said. 

In contrast, the Ministry of Transportation decided to go ahead with the purchase of 20 patrol boats, even after five companies had admitted to the Anti-Corruption Court earlier this year that they had bribed a lawmaker to win the bid. 

The Ministry of Forestry, meanwhile, has yet to revoke logging permits awarded to 15 companies in Riau Province, despite the sentencing of Pelalawan district chief Tengku Azmun Jaafar to 11 years in prison last year for accepting bribes from the firms. 

The BRR was established by the government a few months after the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami that devastated Aceh Province and Nias Island in North Sumatra, killing more than 167,000 people. 

A BRR office for Nias was set up shortly after an earthquake hit the island in March 2005. A total of 621 international NGOs involved in 1,633 projects have worked under the agency. 

The Supreme Audit Agency has given the BRR a clean bill of health, lauding it as one of the most transparent government institutions. 

The BRR is the first government agency to have its own autonomous anticorruption unit, which many say is a direct result of international pressure for transparency in the reconstruction projects. It manages about $3.8 billion in funds, most of which come from foreign donors, for reconstruction in Aceh and Nias. 

The Corruption Eradication Commission, or KPK, established a representative office in Aceh, the only one outside Jakarta, at the request of the BRR. 

Information about projects under the BRR and other organizations can be accessed through the agency’s Web site, http://rand.brr.go.id/RAND/. 

The BRR will disband when its mandate expires in April. Some fear the local government may revert to corruption in its absence.

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Aceh reconstruction body aims to boost

The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Sat, 01/31/2009 9:21 AM  

The Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) has allocated part of Rp 168 billion (US$14 million) from a trust fund raised by private donors to a grassroots economy empowerment program in Gayo Lues, an area unharmed by the 2004 tsunami. 

The Reconstruction Aceh-Nias Trust Fund (RANTF), a special unit of the post-tsunami reconstruction body, have built a micro-hydro power plant in the Puteri Betung village. The plant is urgently required in six Gayo Lues villages, where local economies are desperately in need of stimulation, RANTF executive director Nazmiyah Sayuti told a media conference in Jakarta on Friday. 

“This is an environmentally-friendly project which involves the active participation of locals, especially women,” Nazmiyah said. 

The plant will also discourage local people from cutting down trees in the Mount Leuser National Park conservatory. 

State electricity company PLN failed to reach remote villages which are located near the conservation forest. 

RANTF wraps up its work Saturday having distributed funds for infrastructure projects such as schools, housing complexes and hospitals. 

Nazmiyah said the power-plant project would be managed by locals under a kampung-run business, so sustainability was not an issue. 

She said local people had helped build the plant and therefore were entitled to the facility as “rightful owners”. 

With the departure of the RANTF imminent, the Institute for People-Friendly Economies (IBEKA), which assisted RANTF with the project, will continue to guide locals over the next five years to ensure they can independently manage the plant. 

IBEKA executive director Tri Mumpuni Iskandar said the facility would provide a considerable amount of income to the Puteri Beliung village. 

“The plant will supply electricity to five neighboring villages, with each family paying around Rp 100,000 per month. In total, around Rp 125 million per month will be generated from this plant.” 

Aside from the direct income, electricity is expected to also boost productivity in small-scale businesses, especially in the dried candlenuts, dried cocoa and distilled patchouli industries.

“It took the home industry days to process these products, but it now only requires a few hours,” Tri Mumpuni said. 

Nazmiyah said the project would serve as a model of development for the rest of the country.

Despite positive projections for the area, locals have expressed concern the local government will take control of the plant. 

“We do not want the regent to take the power plant away from us,” Syamsudin Lubis, a villager currently working at the facility, said. 

Village development programs have been providing funding for projects in areas such as Papua and Aceh, which enjoy special autonomy status, for several years. (dis)

Papua Officials Seek BRR Development Aid

The Jakarta Globe, Putri Prameshwari, January 29, 2009

 

Authorities in Papua Province hope to learn how to develop the vast province by taking cues from the Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, or BRR, which has earned praise for its transparent management and procurement system, officials said on Wednesday.

 

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, BRR chairman, said Papua Governor Barnabas Suebu had expressed interest in learning about the methods the BRR used to rebuild Aceh after the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and the province’s western coastline were devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004.

 

“We are ready to help Papua and other disaster-prone parts of Indonesia,” Kuntoro told a panel discussion hosted by the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club.

 

Agus Sumule, an adviser to the Papua governor who is in charge of regional development, said in a telephone interview from Jayapura that the province was particularly interested in learning how to build and manage infrastructure.

 

“We’d like to finish projects on time, with no corruption in the process,” Agus said.

 

Papua is one of the country’s most corrupt provinces, according to Indonesian Corruption Watch. Danang Widoyoko, vice coordinator of the watchdog, said weak supervision of local governments was a key problem in Papua. “Good governance in Papua can only be achieved by strengthening law enforcement,” Danang said.

 

Agus said eight officials from Papua would work out of BRR’s office in Aceh for two weeks to learn about how to manage development projects.

 

On Dec. 26, 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra Island triggered giant waves that washed away entire villages in Aceh, killing more than 170,000 people and leaving millions more homeless.

 

Three months later, an 8.6-magnitude earthquake struck the region, killing more than 1,000 people on Nias Island and destroying tens of thousands of homes.

 

BRR began work in 2005 and has since rebuilt 90 percent of the homes, roads and public facilities that were destroyed. The agency, which has been praised for its work, will see its mandate expire in April.

 

William Sabandar, head of BRR’s Nias chapter, said an agency team visited Papua earlier this month to run training sessions for local government officials.

 

“They’re mainly interested in how to put budgets into action,” he said, adding that BRR would assist the province with governance issues, help it plan major infrastructure projects and provide guidance on a special program designed to strategically develop remote areas by granting villages Rp 100 million ($8,800) a year.

 

“BRR is offering technical support for [the village program] by setting up a control mechanisms to oversee those funds,” Sabandar said. “There should be an anticorruption division within the initiative.”

 

BRR also plans to share computer software it used to plan projects and ensure fiscal accountability. The agency uses online database software that has allowed the public to track its progress with reconstruction efforts in detail.

 

Danang said that due to a lack of infrastructure, Papuans and even the media were not well-informed about the province’s leaders. “A district head can buy an airplane without people noticing,” he said. “But in some parts of Java, people become suspicious the second a district chief buys a new car.”

 

Law enforcement agencies in Papua, Danang said, are too focused on the separatist movement there to notice corruption. Papua was granted special autonomy by the central government in 2001 as part of efforts to curb separatist unrest, but widespread corruption has hindered development, further fueling separatist sentiment.

 

Heru Prasetyo, BRR’s director of donor and international relations, said any reform program in Papua would be done gradually. “It will take time, especially in more remote parts of Papua.”

 

Indonesia`s tsunami reconstruction chief lauds progress

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - When Kuntoro Mangkusubroto dashed in to lead reconstruction of Indonesia's Aceh in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, it was with little immediate help from his own government.

Despite leading an organisation set up by presidential decree in May 2005, Mangkusubroto was forced to go cap in hand to Australia's aid agency for the money to fly his team out to the flattened provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

"We were so grateful to the Australians, but at the same time it was very shameful," Mangkusubroto told AFP in an interview at the modern Jakarta office of the Aceh-Nias reconstruction agency, known as BRR.

A former academic and one-time energy minister, Mangkusubroto has never shied away from robust criticism of his government.

With 168,000 dead in Aceh, and the added disaster of a massive earthquake on desperately poor Nias island, the grinding pace of Indonesia's bureaucracy was always going to hinder the channelling of billions of dollars of foreign aid.

A generation-long separatist war and an entrenched culture of what he calls "pathological" corruption throughout the Indonesian state were not going to help either.

And so it was with an obvious sense of satisfaction that Mangkusubroto ticked off his organisation's list of successes recently, three years after the December 26 tragedy, one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.

Of the BRR's target to build 120,000 new houses, Mangkusubroto said more than 100,000 have been completed and the remaining homes will be finished by April 2008, three months ahead of schedule.

A project to train teachers to replace the 2,500 who died in 2004 has seen startling success, with more than 20,000 trained. However, less than half the 2,000 schools planned have been built so far.

As of October, the BRR has overseen the building of 216 bridges, more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) of roads, 17 sea ports and 10 airports and air strips.

The key to BRR's success has been its full authority over reconstruction -- a fact bitterly resisted at the start by others in the Indonesian government, Mangkusubroto said.

"We didn't have that kind of organisation before in Indonesia," he said.

"We would have to explain this to Jakarta people, that this organisation has full authority, so don't try to block us."

This approach often irritated several ministers who could see their own power eroding, who would often shoot back with responses such as "Okay, Aceh is yours, Indonesia is mine," Mangkusubroto recounted.

Indonesia hands over 100,000th tsunami house in Aceh

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia held a ceremony Friday to hand over the 100,000th rebuilt house in Aceh and Nias, which were devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, an official said.

Mirza Keumala, spokesman of the agency overseeing reconstruction in the wake of the deadly tsunami, said the formal affair took place in Teunom village, Aceh Jaya district.

He said 138 houses, which included the 100,000th, were symbolically handed over to residents in the village, which was in one of the areas worst hit by the tsunami. The catastrophe claimed 168,000 Indonesian lives.

"We wanted to give a morale boost to the people here in rebuilding their district," he told AFP by telephone, adding that people still faced daily challenges here as the infrastructure remained in poor condition.

Keumala said that reconstruction of a targeted 120,000 houses was expected to be complete by April 2008, and despite the formal ceremony on Friday, 103,000 have now been finished.

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh-Nias (BRR), warned in October that the completion of homes did not mean the housing problem was over.

Some of the houses rebuilt since then have remained unoccupied or are of poor quality, while others still lack essentials such as drainage or electricity, he said at the time, pledging that the problems would be solved.

Thousands of tsunami survivors still live in emergency tents

Banda Aceh (ANTARA News) - Thousands of families, who became victims of the 2004 tsunami, still lived in emergency tents and shelters in West Aceh District, Aceh Province, currently - almost three years after the deadly natural disaster.

Data from the West Aceh District administration showed that around 2,584 families or 10,508 people were still living in 33 emergency tents and temporary shelters in the district.

The Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) for Aceh and Nias continued to building houses for tsunami survivors, Alamasyah, a BRR official, said here on Monday.

BRR and NGOs planned to build 16,177 houses for tsunami victims in West Aceh District. Of the target, some 10,027 houses had been completed, and 2,908 houses were being constructed, he said.

An 8.9-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami devastated Aceh and Nias (North Sumatra) on December 26, 2004, killing at least 170,000 people and rendered almost one million others homeless.