Indonesia offers Manila some rebuilding lessons

US Marines load equipment to a trailer truck at Villamor Air Base in Manila yesterday. The US military is scaling down its humanitarian mission in the typhoon-devastated Philippines as the host nation’s need for them diminishes, an American military spokesman said.

DPA/Jakarta

A director of the agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Indonesia’s Aceh province after the 2004 tsunami disaster has some advice for the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan: avoid business as usual.

 “If you stick to the usual bureaucratic rules, you will never be able to achieve what you want to achieve,” said Heru Prasetyo, former director of international affairs for the Aceh Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, whose mission ended in 2009.

 Nearly three weeks after the typhoon that left about 5,000 people dead, the Philippine government says its priority is to rebuild the homes of 4mn displaced people. At least 1,613 people are missing, and damage to infrastructure and agriculture was estimated at 24.53bn pesos ($570.46mn), according to authorities.

 The 2004 tsunami, triggered by a massive earthquake off Sumatra, killed about 170,000 people in Aceh and wiped clean an 800-kilometre coastline.

 Since then, 130,000 houses, 250 kilometres of roads and other infrastructure have been rebuilt in a reconstruction effort that the international community has hailed as successful. Key to the success was the involvement of local communities and stringent anti-corruption measures in a country with a reputation of being one of the most graft-prone in the world, said Prasetyo.

 “We asked the people how they would like their villages to be rebuilt,” he said. “Some people might think that because it was an emergency we should just do it our way. No, that’s not right.”

 The psychological sensibilities of the survivors must also be taken into account, Prasetyo said.

 “In the first three months, survivors will demand many things from the government but after that they will become more rational,” he said.

 The agency, known by its Indonesian initials BRR, also set up an anti-corruption unit within the organisation to ensure accountability.

 “My message to the Philippines: go all out for anti-corruption measures,” he said.

 “We asked every player, including aid organisations, to sign an integrity pact and to report to us if there were any irregularities,” he said.

 “That way we gained trust from the public, because in the end they will be the judges of whether we have been successful or not.”

 Prasetyo said the disaster-mapping zone in the Philippines had been made easier by the advent of social media and online humanitarian activism, unlike in Aceh nine years ago, when it took three months to establish a disaster zone map.