Jakarta – Bureaucratic dysfunction – and sometimes greed – human errors and a lack of capabilities have hampered disaster risk management operation throughout 2011, National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) official said.
"Problems in local bureaucracies are the main problems that have hindered our [BNPB] works," BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.
For example, he said, the agency has prepared funds for the victims of flooding in Wasior, Papua, as well as tsunami victims in Mentawai, West Sumatra. However these funds were delayed because provincial and district administrations were jostling with each other over control of the funds.
"We could not give away the funds carelessly, as we were audited by the Supreme Audit Agency [BPK]," he added.
The agency initially received a budget of Rp 668 billion in 2011, which then rose to Rp 1.33 trillion due to special rehabilitation projects in West Sumatra. Now in 2012, it is budgeted to receive Rp 995 billion.
Besides problems of local bureaucracy, Sutopo has also criticized many regional administration officials in charge for disaster risk management for their incompetence in disaster management.
"In Majalengka, West Java, the regional Disaster Mitigation Agency [BPBD] chief was replaced four times throughout the year. Moreover, these replacements were not really adept in disaster risk management," he said.
He said that unique characteristics of each region have also added variety to disaster risk management operations. In Bojonegoro, East Java, the local government was forced to require local residents to learn swimming in order to better anticipate floods.
"In the region there is an area that experiences flood from time to time. The local government now requires students at elementary school, as well as junior and senior high school to learn swimming,"
The government pursued the initiative because relocation for most residents was simply not an option. They insisted on living in the same area because, "their livelihoods were there and they have no other options", Sutopo said. "We called it 'Living in Harmony with Risk of Disaster'," he added.
According to the agency's data, 1,598 disasters happened in the country during 2011, mostly floods, landslide, and drought which all were caused by meteorological factors.
Despite the high occurrence of weather-related disasters, transportation-related disasters claimed the most lives. Data shows that at least 372 people died from only 20 transportation-related disasters, much higher than the 160 casualties due to flooding throughout the year.
"Shipwrecks are the most common transportation disasters, generally due to human error, overcrowding, and inadequate safety equipment," Sutopo said.
Recently in December, a boat carrying more than 200 asylum seekers, reportedly from the Middle East, capsized in the waters off Prigi, Trenggalek. (rpt)