Banda Aceh – Indonesia's tsunami reconstruction agency pledged Wednesday to speed up aid to the homeless after police clashed with protesters at a blockade of its offices.
Some 1,000 survivors laid siege to the headquarters of the Aceh Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, complaining of the slow disbursement of aid.
About 50 staff, including agency head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, were forced to spend Tuesday night there, a BRR spokesman said.
Police fired water cannon to disperse 200 remaining protestors Wednesday after a first attempt to end the demonstration ended with them hurling rocks at police, witnesses said.
Initial negotiations between officials and protestors, organized by a local non-governmental organisation, had stalled over how relief funding would be channelled to them, BRR spokesman H. Mizra Keumala told a press briefing.
The mediators demanded that the BRR hand over its rehabilitation and reconstruction programs to them and put 5.4 trillion rupiah (593 million dollars) into their account, Keumala said.
The BRR could not alter the budget it already had and the NGO's cooperation program would have to be tendered like any other, he said. He added however that "we are forming a special team to look at issues in the barracks" where the survivors are being housed.
He also said that within 14 days, the agency would accelerate the building of houses for the refugees, handing out grants to orphans and issuing an economic recovery fund for victims.
"These were in our program but we are reprioritising," Keumala said.
"We welcome the democratic character of the demonstration – there was no anarchy – but we will keep on working as usual," he added.
About 500 protestors returned to the headquarters in the late afternoon to continue their demonstration but about 200 paramilitary police – many of them armed with batons and plastic shields – chased them away.
"They are acting like they are a king and we are the subjects. There is no realisation of the projects in the field," tsunami survivor Zulkarnai, who is living in barracks in Aceh Besar district outside the capital, told AFP.
Some of the protestors claimed the leader of their NGO had disappeared and they wanted police to produce him.
Indonesia was the nation worst-hit by the December 2004 tsunami, which killed some 168,000 Acehnese and left half a million people homeless.
Tens of thousands of people still lack permanent homes despite billions of dollars in aid being offered by the international community.