5,000 permanent homes for Lanka's tsunami victims completed by 2005

Some 5,000 out of 78,000 homes for Sri Lanka's tsunami victims will have been completed by the end of 2005, aid organisation Oxfam said yesterday.

An AFP report from Jakarta said nearly an year after the December 26 tsunami, the rebuilding of homes in the worst-hit countries is moving ahead but there is still a huge amount of work to do.

By the anniversary of the disaster, around one-fifth of the 1.8 million people made homeless by the waves that slammed into 11 Indian Ocean countries will be in permanent homes, Oxfam said in a report.

"This issue has given governments and agencies involved in tsunami relief and rehabilitation their most difficult task, and we have to face up to the fact that the job has still only just begun," the agency said. Some 308,000 homes are required in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, according to figures it has compiled.

In Indonesia's Aceh, by the end of 2005 around one-quarter of the people in need will be in new permanent homes. Building permanent housing, the report noted, "is a slow business, even in stable, rich societies."

It took seven years for Japan's Kobe to regain the social and economic levels it enjoyed before its 1995 earthquake left 300,000 homeless. In Iran's Bam, it took two years before a rebuilding programme hit full stride.

"Despite this knowledge, an important error in the initial work done on shelter was that few of those in need of new homes were told just how long they might expect to wait," Oxfam said.

"It is better to be realistic now than to risk more disappointment for people who have suffered so much."

Rebuilding was hampered initially by governments as they considered whether to institute a buffer zone next to the coast in damaged areas. While the idea was scrapped in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka are to maintain such areas, which may impact survivors adversely.

Reconstruction has also been hindered by a lack of road and port infrastructure, making for high delivery costs in Aceh and Sri Lanka.

The quality of those houses which have been completed has also varied widely, Oxfam said.

Oxfam also urged better leadership and coordination from bureaucracies, particularly in Indonesia.

Despite the obstacles so far, the charity said that it expects work to "speed up enormously in the second year after the tsunami. By the end of 2006, the end of the task should be in sight."

The organisation will have completed 714 earthquake-resistant houses by year end and has pledged to build more than 2,100 by the end of 2006.

- AFP