Funds aimed at repairing dams and draining mud, not for compensation - report
BANGKOK (AlertNet) –Indonesia’s government is providing increased funding to mitigate and control a mudflow that has destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of people since 2006, with the funds aimed at repairing dams and draining the mud and not for compensation, according to the Jakarta Globe.
The mudflow mitigation funds will edge up to 1.33 trillion rupiah ($155.6 million) next year from this year’s estimated 1.29 trillion rupiah ($151 million), with 98 percent assigned to create drainage for 48 million cubic metres of mud and for repair and construction of dams in three villages near the disaster, the report said.
The Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency (BPLS) will manage the funds, the Globe said.
But the paper quoted Zainul Lutfi, chairman of a special committee on the mudflow, as saying the funds were barely enough to cover what was needed.
“(The central government is) only focusing on the construction at the site, but not the social impact,” he said, adding that another 4.1 trillion rupiah ($482 million) was needed to provide compensation, especially for neighbourhood units that have not received any aid since BPLS was formed five years ago.
The mudflow has engulfed villages, roads, dozens of factories and swathes of paddy and sugarcane fields, as well as damaging railway, gas and electricity networks since it began erupting in mid-2006.
It has been blamed on the rupture of a gas drill near the country's second biggest city of Surabaya.
Energy firm Lapindo, which drilled the gas well, is partly owned by current Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie, who was the country’s coordinating minister for people’s welfare at the time of the disaster. Lapindo’s management and the government blamed the disaster on an earthquake that struck days before the mudflow.
Around 10,000 to 15,000 cub metres of mud is still gushing out per day. At the height of the disaster, the flow was around 150,000 cubic metres, local media reports said.
Meanwhile, other disaster agencies are facing cuts, the paper reported. The National Disaster Mitigation Agency will see its budget slashed by almost 30 percent and the National Search and Rescue Agency’s budget will be reduced by 27 percent.
Still, the government is maintaining its funds for its emergency disaster response at 4 trillion rupiah, the Globe said.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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