Ridwan Max Sijabat/Tony Hotland, Jakarta – The government is insisting on classifying Saturday's deadly earthquake in Yogyakarta and Central Java as a local disaster, despite calls for it to be declared a national disaster and complaints about poorly coordinated aid efforts.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla said here Tuesday it was not a national disaster because its scale and impact were not as great as the 2004 tsunami in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, and the provincial administrations in the two provinces could handle it properly.
Kalla, also chairman of the National Disaster Management and Refugee Coordination Board (Bakornas PBP), said the government allocated Rp 1 trillion (US$107.5 million) from the 2006 state budget for emergency relief and to carry out reconstruction.
In Yogyakarta, several religious figures and social activists argued it qualified for the higher status because it caused a huge number of fatalities and widespread physical damage to houses, schools, houses of worship and infrastructure.
Among those at the gathering were the chairman of the country's second largest Muslim organization Muhammadiyah, Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of the local office of the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) Sumadi and journalist Rosyad Sholeh.
They faulted the government for acting too slowly in dealing with the emergency situation, in which more than 5,300 people lost their lives.
The chief of Bakornas PBP's relief section, Sugeng Trioetomo, said the central government believed the two provincial administrations were capable of handling the disaster.
"There are no special criteria on disasters classified as national disasters and those (considered) local disasters, but the Yogya quake is termed a local disaster because it could be handled by the local administrations," he said.
He said all international institutions who wanted to help the victims should coordinate with the field post command team, led by the commander of the Diponegoro Military Command overseeing the two provinces, Maj. Gen. Sunarso.
Although the details have yet to be officially announced by Bakornas, Sugeng said confusion over aid delivery should be overcome once donors knew the point of contact was the commander.
Foreign aid began flowing into the country only a day after the disaster, but foreign delegations complain of confusion about distributing the aid.
"I would say that the biggest problem is coordination," said European Commission delegation head Jean Breteche. "Everybody wants to help, which is good, but it is more efficient if it is well coordinated." He acknowledged the difficulty of coordination.
"When you have 50 or more NGOs, donors, with their own equipment, it is not easy to coordinate because they want to start quickly." Malik Aliun, a local spokesman for the Saudi Arabian government's charity institution, said Riyadh was committed to supplying humanitarian and medical aid totaling $5 million, but could not proceed due to a lack of information from the Indonesian government on where to land.
Some international organizations have praised the initial aid efforts. "The government and army have done a lot since the earthquake struck, and the cooperation between the humanitarian community and the Indonesian authorities was very good, and very efficient," UN humanitarian coordination office spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs was quoted as saying by AFP in Geneva.
Social worker Iman Prasodjo said coordination in the handling of natural disasters would remain a problem unless the current bureaucratic system of Bakornas PBP was changed.
"The structure of the coordinating board and its task force has to be revamped, and all government personnel should be replaced by professionals and trained workers to allow them to handle natural disasters and refugees professionally," he said.