Banda Aceh – Villagers cross a river on a makeshift ferry as Indonesian soldiers work to reconstruct a bridge which was swept away by last month's tsunami in Loknga, near Banda Aceh. Agence France-Presse photo

As hundreds of thousands of psychologically scarred survivors prepare to leave tent camps and return home in Indonesia's tsunami-hit Aceh province, the task of rebuilding their shattered lives may prove their biggest challenge yet.

Survivors – most of whom are mourning loved ones lost in the disaster – know they have no homes to return to and no jobs. But they may soon discover that even their towns and villages may never be rebuilt.

Up to 400,000 people, or 10 per cent of the province's population, may have to be resettled, according to Budi Atmadi Adiputro, who commands a massive relief operation. Up to 250,000 of them are believed to be staying with friends or relatives.

With the relief operations soon to move from emergency aid to the reconstruction phase, authorities face tough choices on how and where to accommodate those displaced by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami which killed nearly 174,000 people in Aceh.

Dozens of foreign governments and aid organisations have pledged billions of dollars for the relief and reconstruction effort, which many say will take years to complete.

Officials from the national government are due to release in about four weeks the final blueprint for the reconstruction of Banda Aceh and other devastated coastal settlements on the northernmost part of Sumatra Island, said Alwi Shihab, senior Indonesian minister for social welfare.

Barracks-type housing, semi-permanent tents and houses for up to 150,000 people are set to be completed within the same time.

Yet with more than 700 bodies still being recovered daily in the coastal wastelands, some officials have dropped hints that some areas would be abandoned rather than rebuilt.

A plan raised in government circles is for the 10km coastline of Banda Aceh, which may have lost half its 230,000 population, to be abandoned to the putrid seawater that still covers some of the ruins. A half-kilometre strip along the coast may become off-limits to human habitation. The exclusion zone, according to these officials, would be planted with mangrove trees and palms, with fish pens serving as a further buffer to any future tsunami.

Dr Shihab said the final word on whether "to bring back those who are still alive from that coastline back to their original places or not" would be in the official blueprint.

A second consideration is "whether or not [it is feasible] to rebuild the same city or village in their original design" for environmental, financial, psychological and other reasons.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pledged on Friday to build a better Aceh, and he and the parliament plan to create an agency reporting directly to the president to oversee Aceh's reconstruction, which would open its books to the public to prevent corruption.

Dr Shihab pledged that the resettlement sites would be "much better than the place where [the people] are now" – the tent cities strung out across the province.