We have acted irresponsibly toward the 10,000 people in Sidoarjo, East Java, displaced by the mudflow. They have been suffering for almost 10 months, and yet we seem not to care about their fate.

Whenever a disaster strikes, we normally reach out to the victims. Be they victims of the tsunami in Aceh, the earthquakes in Yogyakarta and most recently in West Sumatra or the landslides in East Nusa Tenggara, they all received help and support from their fellow Indonesians, as well as from people overseas. We sent relief aid and volunteers to help ease their suffering. However, when it comes to the more than 10,000 people displaced by the mudflow in Sidoarjo, why don't we care?

No single organization has come forward to raise money or send volunteers to help the Sidoarjo victims. Worse, the government has been unwilling to take money out of its coffers for them.

So why have these displaced people been so neglected by us? It's because we do not see them as real victims compared to, say, victims of an earthquake. We consider them future beneficiaries of Lapindo Brantas Inc., the company blamed for the mudflow disaster. So we discriminate against them when it comes to extending support, leaving it to Lapindo and the Bakrie family – the ultimate owner of Lapindo – to take care of them.

Now, almost 10 months since the hot mud began gushing out near Lapindo's Banjar Panji I exploratory well in the Brantas block on May 29, the fate of more than 10,000 displaced people remains dangling in the air. Lapindo has largely failed to meet its promises to compensate these people properly. And the government remains as reluctant as ever to intervene and help them.

Instead of offering new solutions to the mudflow crisis, the government has extended for one month the work of the national mudflow response team, whose original term expired last Thursday. This extension, made at the eleventh hour, underlines the lack of attention and care the government has given for Sidoarjo's displaced.

This national response team, established by presidential decree, has failed in each of its three main tasks: taking care of the victims, stopping the mudflow and dealing with the mud that had already submerged more than 1,000 houses and hundreds of hectares of productive land in several villages.

The victims continue to suffer, they have yet to be compensated properly, the mud is still gushing out of the ground in even larger volumes – and the huge sea of mud remains.

It is clear the team will never be able to deliver a satisfactory solution to the crisis, and yet the government continues to stick with it. The main problem is that the team is financed by Lapindo, leading to a blatant conflict of interest.

Also, the scope of the team's duties is very limited. It has no money to compensate victims and, worse, it is not tasked with dealing with the problem of damaged infrastructure as a result of the mudflow, especially the turnpike that is now buried beneath the mud, creating a transportation bottleneck and punishing East Java's economy as a whole.

There have been numerous suggestions on how to resolve this crisis. One good one was that the government establish an independent body with wide-ranging authority, similar to the Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BRR). We support the idea of such an independent agency to deal with the crisis.

Such a body should have independence in budgeting, and it has to have enough resources to operate. The government has come up with a figure of more than Rp 7 trillion (US$770 million) to compensate victims and rebuild damaged infrastructure. Therefore, the body should have at least this much money at its disposal.

When it's up and running, the new body should first of all focus on the victims. It should not repeat the mistake of the existing national team, which has put most of its energy into futile efforts to stop the mudflow rather than attending to the needs of the displaced – at least judging by the money it has spent.

Focusing on people also means the new body should adopt community-based solutions, as the BRR has done in Aceh. For example, most of the victims want cash compensation for lost property rather than being relocated to designated housing complexes, as suggested by local politicians.

This new team should listen to the victims, not the politicians. Relocating these people to designated housing complexes would open the door for corruption, such as in the purchase of the land and in the construction of houses.

Second, this body should focus on restoring damaged infrastructure, thus restoring the overall economy of East Java. Only then should come the problem of stopping the mudflow and doing something about all of the mud that has already spewed out of the ground.

Last, but no less important, the new agency should come up with a permanent resolution for Lapindo and its partners in the Brantas block – PT Medco Energi Internasional and Santos Ltd. of Australia. We cannot hold Lapindo and its partners hostage without a proposed solution in sight. Foreign investors, especially those in the oil and gas sector, are watching closely to see how the government handles this issue.

In the end, the new body or team or whatever it will be, should deliver certainty for all parties, especially the victims, businesspeople and the public in Sidoarjo and East Java in general, as well as to Lapindo, Medco and Santos. Providing certainty to these parties should be the measure of success in handling this disaster.