Australia defends aid work in tsunami-hit Indonesia
CANBERRA (AFP): Australia’s foreign minister Thursday defended the country’s aid agencies against Indonesian criticism that their efforts in tsunami-hit Aceh province were lagging behind promises.
“I think they’ve done a wonderful job and I’ve monitored fairly carefully the activities of the Australian aid agencies,” Alexander Downer told reporters.
He was reacting to remarks attributed to the head of Indonesia’s Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.
Kuntoro singled out CARE International whose Australian arm has undertaken some of the biggest rebuilding efforts in Aceh since the devastating tsunami of December 26, 2004.
“Last year CARE pledged many houses, but they keep reducing the number, they have come down to a third or a quarter of what they promised,” Kuntoro was quoted as saying.
Putting CARE and other agencies on notice, Kuntoro said his agency would take over any projects that were still unfinished in June next year and order the charities responsible to leave, the newspaper said.
“I completely disagree with those comments,” Downer said.
“You can’t just build all of the houses that are needed overnight. It takes time, you’ve got to get planning approvals, you’ve got to get the agreement of the local villagers for where the houses should be built, what sort of houses should be built – all of these things take a good deal of time,” he said.
“It’s going to take years to complete this work, not months,” he said. Aceh was hardest hit by the 9.3-magnitude quake off the coast of Sumatra that triggered the tsunami, which killed more than 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean.