Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Jakarta – The Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) admits it has turned a blind eye to hundreds of houses being rebuilt in prohibited, highly polluted areas that were devastated by last year's tsunami in Aceh.

The houses have been rebuilt by tsunami victims with assistance from non-governmental organization volunteers. The refugees say they are sick of living in tents and waiting for the BRR to provide them with promised new homes on safer ground.

BRR spokesman Sudirman Said said it was not easy to prohibit the residents from rebuilding their homes in devastated areas because many people refused to move away from their ancestral lands, even if they knew the dangers of staying there.

"In the field, we cannot expect that every plan will materialize as perfectly as people in Jakarta would hope," Sudirman told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

The BRR is planning to build about 120,000 houses throughout tsunami-hit Aceh to shelter about 500,000 displaced persons. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2007.

Concerns about houses being built in heavily polluted areas have been raised by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Office of the State Minister for the Environment. The WWF notes that an estimated 1,600 houses rebuilt by tsunami victims are located in areas marked as "prohibited" on the reconstruction blueprint prepared by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas).

"Many houses were built in areas prone to natural disasters and in places contaminated by toxic substances," WWF Aceh program coordinator Nana Fitriana Firman said.

WWF workers and ministry officials met to discuss Aceh's town planning last week.

Sudirman, meanwhile, said the number of houses built in areas considered precarious numbered "in the several hundreds", not as many as the WWF had alleged. "For now, we will let them do this, but as soon as all the (120,000) houses are built, the BRR and the regional administration will move them and properly compensate them," he said.

The ministry warned that about 100 spots in the tsunami-ravaged province targeted as residential areas were unsafe because the soil contained toxic waste and e-coli bacteria shifted by the Dec. 24 tsunami.

Nana said about 100 houses had been rebuilt in the Ulelee village district, an area still heavily polluted. "Most of them told us they just wanted to have homes again as soon as possible. They didn't bother to check whether or not their original home area was still safe to live in," she said.

According to the BRR's annual report, about 67,500 families are still living in tents, with only 16,000 homes built as of the end of last year.

Bappenas environmental division head Medrilzam warned that unless the BRR stopped housing development in dangerous areas, Aceh would see slum housing mushrooming. "When you build houses separately without proper infrastructure, such as water sanitation and public spaces, it is certain there will be a surge in slum areas in the years ahead," he said.