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Lombok faces slow rebuild

Safer and more secure: A woman passes through a row of temporary buildings constructed by earthquake survivors in Kerandangan village in Batulayar district, West Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, on Monday

Panca Nugraha (The Jakarta Post)
Mataram
Wed, December 19, 2018

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Lombok faces slow rebuild

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afer and more secure: A woman passes through a row of temporary buildings constructed by earthquake survivors in Kerandangan village in Batulayar district, West Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, on Monday. Residents affected by a massive earthquake that hit the region on Aug. 5 claimed they had not yet received any of the assistance promised by the government to help them rebuild houses destroyed by the disaster.(Antara/Ahmad Subaidi)

The reconstruction of tens of thousands of houses that were damaged or destroyed by a series of earthquakes that struck Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), between July and August has been slow, officials have said.

Three months after the post-disaster reconstruction phase started in September, authorities recorded that only around 3.2 percent of houses had been built, out of 75,665 severely damaged houses in North Lombok, West Lombok and East Lombok regencies, as well as in Mataram city.

Authorities have verified that 216,519 houses were damaged in the disaster, including the 75,665 severely damaged houses scattered across the province, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).

The central government had disbursed Rp 1.5 trillion (US$103.5 million) to date for the reconstruction of all the damaged houses in the region, BNPB head Willem Rampangilei said on Tuesday at a meeting with related stakeholders in Mataram.

However, Willem admitted that the process to rebuild the region had been moving at a snail’s pace, with only around 1,487 simple healthy instant houses (RISHA), 337 instant wooden houses (RIKA), and 600 conventional instant houses (RIKO) having been worked on by Monday. Of these, 40 RISHA, 70 RIKA and 26 RIKO houses have been completed.

RISHA, RIKA and RIKO are types of prefabricated quake-resistant houses that are offered by the Public Works and Housing Ministry.

“The number stands at 3.22 percent to date, which is considered very small. This needs to be accelerated,” Willem said.

One of the obstacles they faced was the low production capacity for concrete panels for RISHA houses, as panels for just 30 RISHA units were produced per day, according to Willem.

“Ideally, it could cover production for 400 [houses] a day.”

Public Works and Housing Ministry expert staff for integrated development Achmad Gani Ghazali said his office had been pushing to have more companies, particularly local businesses, produce RISHA panels.

The lack of manpower with the ability to build RISHA houses by attaching concrete panels using bolts — different from conventional houses built out of heavy materials like bricks and cement — was also a problem, Achmad said.

In September, the government set a target of six months to complete the reconstruction project, even though President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo himself predicted that the time frame might not be as expected. A month later, Jokowi embarked on his third visit to Lombok to oversee the rebuilding process and instructed authorities to simplify the procedures.

“The government wants [to build] earthquake-resistant houses to avoid risks. But building them is indeed hard,” NTB Governor Zulkieflimansyah said.

He also blamed the sluggishness on coordination among related stakeholders, saying that the presidential instruction on Lombok disaster mitigation, signed by Jokowi on Aug. 23 to accelerate the reconstruction project, also tended to put the NTB administration in a “supervisory” role, leaving it without direct responsibility.

The instruction mandates the Public Works and Housing Ministry to lead the process, while giving the provincial administration the task of verifying and validating the damaged houses eligible to receive assistance — a role which is part of the multilayered aid-eligibility assessment.

“We have now proposed a policy that would allow us to be on the front line.”

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) previously advised people living in Lombok to remain wary about possible landslides and flash floods during the rainy season, which is predicted to reach its peak in January, since earthquakes have made slopes less stable. (spl)

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