Michael Perry, Yogyakarta – Aid is now flowing to tens of thousands of survivors of Indonesia's earthquake but shelter remains a critical problem, the United Nations said on Monday, as Jakarta revised down the disaster death toll.
The Indonesian government said it would start handing out compensation to the victims to buy clothes and reconstruct their houses, more than a week after the quake killed 5,782 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
An official at the Social Affairs Department said the death toll from the magnitude 6.3 quake – which struck the Java island at dawn on May 27 – had been revised down from the earlier 6,234 after officials reviewed the numbers. UN local coordinator Charlie Higgins said the aid operation was now in full swing after being constrained by the topography of Yogyakarta and Central Java, where hundreds of villages are squeezed between rice fields and congested urban centers.
"We have overcome most of the logistical bottlenecks that prevented the flow of assistance," he said.
"Many people simply don't want to leave their property, so we have to seek them out and that takes more time," Higgins told a news conference. "It brings short-term problems but it also brings quicker long-term recovery."
Higgins said providing housing for survivors was critical with more than 200,000 homes destroyed or badly damaged. He said so far only some 70,000 families had received housing assistance.
Many survivors said they did not have the money to buy building materials after the quake. "We cannot rebuild anything until we get money from the government. We are only farmers here. Government aid has not come here," said Sugiman, 27, from Mredo Gatak village in the worst-hit area, Bantul.
Cash handout
The government said it would give villagers whose houses were destroyed up to 30 million rupiah to rebuild their homes, while victims would also get 10 kg (22 lb) of rice a month, 3,000 rupiah ($0.324) a day, cash for kitchen equipment and clothes, and free medical treatment for three months.
"Donations will be given directly to the family head in the village," Aburizal Bakrie, the coordinating minister for people's welfare, said in a statement. "All victims will get health treatment, including surgery, free of charge." Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Monday that 200 trucks had started delivering rice to survivors.
Aid workers had been struggling to get help to quake victims living in fragile tents and makeshift shelters where their homes once stood. Sanitation remains a concern for these people, who risk infection and skin irritation by bathing in dirty water.
There have been no disease outbreaks yet, but the risk of infectious diseases remains high because of the crowding and squalid conditions in some quake-hit areas.
There have also been worries over survivors taking refuge in chicken coops, with potential exposure to the bird flu virus in a country that has recorded 37 human deaths from the H5N1 strain.
But people are picking up the pieces of their lives. Their main market now a wreck, some women in Bantul set up a temporary roadside market to sell vegetables.
"Business is bad because people are not shopping any more. They are afraid of leaving their houses because when they go to markets something may happen to the family at home," said Dartini, a 40-year-old woman in Bantul.
Several villages now have electricity and many shops have reopened.
The United Nations has unveiled plans for a $103 million six-month relief operation to provide aid like emergency shelter, medical assistance, clean water, sanitation, food and child protection across the quake-devastated region.
[Additional reporting by Jalil Hamid.]