Homes, jobs elusive for some Indonesian tsunami survivors

BRR had earlier promised that 78,000 houses of 128,000 required would be finished by the end of the year, but some work has been delayed because of the difficulty in finding contractors that can carry out large-scale projects, BRR chief Kuntoro Mangkusubroto said.

"We are three months behind and we apologize," he told reporters over the weekend. "We can tell everybody that we have worked very hard, but the truth is there are people who are not happy and that's the way it is. We will improve what we can improve," he said, adding that all houses should be completed by mid-2007.

Some of those who received houses have delayed occupying them due a lack of infrastructure, such as clean water and electricity. Others chose to remain in temporary barracks because they have no means to be independent.

Many of the houses are built using substandard materials after the companies appointed to build them sub-contract the projects to smaller firms, officials and aid groups say.

'WE WILL BECOME LAZY'

Beti's neighbor, Darmiyati, who also lost her husband in the tsunami, is keen to move to a permanent house but there isn't one for her.

She has remarried but her new husband has not found work, forcing her to let her two children live with their grandmother in another town. "They should provide jobs for us. We don't like living on handouts because we will become lazy."

Aid workers said the relief effort in Aceh needs to focus more now on restoring the livelihood of tsunami victims to help reduce the danger of over-reliance on handouts.

Ram Mohan Dayasagar, the British Red Cross's Livelihood Manager in Aceh, said that the flood of aid coming into the province on the tip of Sumatra island had in some cases discouraged people from returning to the land.

"One of the problems has been the handouts by agencies followed with the government subsidizing their existence with WFP (World Food Program) food and pocket money expenses."

A progress report released jointly by BRR and donor institutions this month showed 69 percent of working-age men and 36 percent of working-age women in Aceh's urban areas are employed, many of them in reconstruction-related jobs. In rural areas 68 percent of the men and 45 percent of women are working.

But officials say these numbers reflect a bubble economy spurred by reconstruction activity driven in part by foreign aid pledges of $7.1 billion, $5.9 billion of which has been allocated for current and future projects.

But Beti and Darmiyati, the women in the Banda Aceh barrack, can only wonder where all the money has gone.

"I heard there's a huge amount of money coming from abroad, but how come we don't even have basic necessities?" Beti asks.