Reporter: Anne Barker

Eleanor Hall: In Indonesia's Aceh Province, bureaucratic delays and concerns about corruption have stymied efforts to rebuild the communities destroyed in last year's tsunami.

It's only in the last week or so that reconstruction has finally begun in a few select areas and there's a growing sense of frustration among survivors who are still homeless and without jobs after six months, and Anne Barker has just been to Aceh and filed this report.

Anne Barker: At a community roll call at Lhoknga village, near Banda Aceh, tsunami refugees receive their daily ration of noodles and rice. For six months they've relied solely on aid to survive, since the tsunami swept away their homes, their jobs and for many, their entire families.

Across Aceh tens of thousands of victims still live in flimsy tents, dotted among a landscape of rubble that was once residential streets. And many, like Umar Ali and his wife Rosna, wonder if they'll ever live in their own house again.

Umar Ali (translated): It is impossible. I cannot imagine I can build my own house from my own money. The only possibility is to get assistance from outside, foreign NGOs for example, to help us build our house again.

Anne Barker: A year ago, Umar and Rosna Ali were middle class, with a comfortable house and well-paying jobs. But the tsunami took everything, including their only children, two daughters aged 17 and 20. Now they spend their days scavenging in the rubble for scrap metal to supplement their meagre ration.

Umar Ali (translated): They sell the scrap iron to a trader here, and they get sometimes, 20,000 sometimes 8,000 a day. Today they get 10,000 a day. That's how they survive.

Anne Barker: There's a mounting sense of frustration in Aceh, even anger, at the grindingly slow pace of reconstruction Six months on, many of the worst hit areas appear unchanged since the tsunami struck.

Bureaucratic delays, the loss of land registers and the fear for many of returning to land so close to the sea, have all hampered efforts to rebuild. And only a fraction of all foreign aid has been handed over, because authorities take painstaking measures to ensure the money is spent wisely.

Even the head of Aceh's rehabilitation agency, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, shares the community's anger.

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto: The people are really frustrated. They live in a tent, they live in what you call, in the barracks, okay. They are waiting for a signal for them to go back and there's no signal coming. So they are really frustrated.

Anne Barker: This tiny fishing village of Deah Baro is one of the very few places near Banda Aceh where new houses are finally going up.

But it's the survivors themselves who are building their own homes. The aid agency Oxfam has supplied the materials for 40 houses, and the rehabilitation agency is giving residents basic training in bricklaying and concreting. Qxfam's Manasi Rajagopalan says the first houses will be finished in three weeks.

Manasi Rajagopalan: We've given them the materials and they have identified the 40 most vulnerable households here. So that means, you know, people who have lost the head of the household, the women who are widowed, even children. So that's what you're seeing here. These groups of men doing all this work here.

Anne Barker: Of course, new bricks and mortar will never replace those that died. Deah Baro was one of the worst hit areas and lost hundreds of homes and countless lives. But Manasi Rajagopalan says paradoxically, the population here may even have grown.

Manasi Rajagopalan: The children have been orphaned, or people who have lost lot of their family, they're moving in with families who are not related to them, or they are moving in with relatives, which is why we see a lot of movement as well, between you know, people coming in from other places into Deah Baro or people moving out and living with relatives. So are we building houses for just one person – no.

Eleanor Hall: And that's Manasi Rajagopalan from Oxfam in Aceh, speaking to Anne Barker.