Lack of Legal Wood Leaves Tsunami Survivors in Rotting Tents

Tens of thousands of Indonesian survivors of the 2004 Asian tsunami are still living in rotting tents, despite a months-long campaign to rehouse them, because the International Federation of the Red Cross has struggled to secure legally certified timber, it emerged yesterday.

Only 235 out of the approximately 16,000 temporary shelters needed for the 67,500 Acehnese living under canvas have been completed since the programme began in September.

The Indonesian government, the UN, and the Red Cross had hoped everyone would have been out of tents by March but officials said yesterday the end of June is the new target, which some aid workers described as ambitious.

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the head of the government's Aceh reconstruction agency, said none of the timber available within Indonesia could be used because it has not been legally felled from sustainable forests.

"We are therefore having to import it all from overseas, and legal and sustainable timber is not easy to find," he said.

More than 600,000 people were left homeless in Aceh as a result of the tsunami, which also destroyed much of the infrastructure, such as ports and roads, required to rebuild communities.

So far 16,200 of the estimated 120,000 new permanent homes required have been built. The target for 2006 is 83,600, in addition to the temporary shelters.

Lourdes Masing, the International Federation of the Red Cross's coordinator for the temporary shelter programme, said many companies who submitted tenders to supply the wood used harmful chemicals and so were rejected.

"We have just found some appropriate wood so we hope to see a lot of progress in the coming weeks," she said.

Eric Morris, the UN's coordinator in Aceh, said all the other supplies for the shelters are in place. "Once the timber has been supplied everything will move very quickly," he said.

But Arian Ardie, a businessman who has been importing wood into Aceh since the tsunami, said the June target would be hard to meet.

"They are planning on bringing the timber in over a four-month period but it's going to take at least six months in total to clear it, treat it and get it transported to the locations," he said.