T

he Mount Sinabung Emergency Response Task force announced Sunday that starting this week the government would send home 2,443 people evacuated after a spate of Mt. Sinabung eruptions that began over a year ago.

Task force commander Lt. Col. Asep Sukarna, who is also commander of the Karo Military District Command, said that the decision had been approved by the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), the Karo regency administration and the task force on Wednesday.

He said the decision was made after receiving the go-ahead from the volcanology agency.

'€œAlthough Mt. Sinabung is still active, its alert status has been decreased to the third-highest out of the four alert levels,'€ Asep said on Sunday.

Asep said the 2,443 evacuees were the last to return home and had spent over a year in evacuation centers due to Mt. Sinabung'€™s frequent eruptions. Those returning home came from Singgarang-garang and Sukanalu subdistricts in the Namanteran district.

They are currently being housed in seven evacuation centers, namely GBKP Berastagi; Klasis GBKP building Berastagi; KWK building Berastagi; GBKP on Jl Kutacane Kabanjahe; Campus two and three of the Karo University Kabanjahe; and the Serbaguna building Kabanjahe.

Asep said the return of the evacuees was to commence Sunday but was postponed because the Karo regent and staff members were busy.

BNPB spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho confirmed the decision regarding the return of Mt. Sinabung evacuees, saying that it would most probably be conducted within the next three days.

'€œToday we are informing the evacuees about their departure. The process could begin on Tuesday or Wednesday,'€ Sutopo said Sunday.

Karo Regent Terkelin Brahmana said separately that his administration would hold a meeting on Monday to work out all the details.

He denied that the sending-home was delayed because he was occupied, saying that everything had to be well prepared.

'€œThis is not a matter of sending them home today or tomorrow, but whether their houses and fields damaged by the eruptions are already ready to live in. This is what we will discuss on Monday,'€ Terkelin told reporters on Sunday.

He said that all the evacuees'€™ damaged houses had been fixed, but their fields were still covered in volcanic ash and were not yet ready to cultivate.

In a related development, the regent also reported that 50 houses built by the Indonesian Military (TNI) for returning evacuees were not yet ready to be lived in, as no fields were yet available.

As many as 370 families from Suka Meriah, Bekerah and Simacem subdistricts displaced by Mt. Sinabung eruptions will be relocated by the government to an area in Siosar forest, Merek district, some 40 kilometers from the volcano.

Terkelin said all evacuees would receive houses and fields, but the fields were not yet ready to distribute.

'€œThey will be distributed after the evacuees are relocated,'€ he said.

The relocation is required because the residents'€™ villages, which are located in the hazard zone, or within a radius of three kilometers from the crater of Mt. Sinabung, had been destroyed by pyroclastic flows and volcanic ash during the eruptions.