Eid al-Fitr in Refugee Tents: The Suffering of Sumatran Flood Victims in Aceh |

---

In the next few days, Muslims around the world will celebrate Eid al-Fitr 1447 Hijri. This is a crucial moment, especially for the people of Indonesia—including Aceh—who celebrate Eid al-Fitr more than Eid al-Adha.

Unfortunately, this sacred moment will not be a pleasant one for everyone, including those displaced by floods and landslides in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra. Many refugees still live in evacuation centers. The government has built more suitable temporary housing, but many remain in evacuation tents.

There are indeed discrepancies between data from the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) and each district. BNPB states that 6,187 people are still living in tents.

Despite the data collection, the data from each district in Aceh as of March 12th differs. In North Aceh alone, 33,261 people are still displaced, 18,944 in Gayo Lues, 14,794 in Pidie Jaya, 74,735 in Aceh Tamiang, and 1,954 in East Aceh. This striking difference could be due to differences in verification methods or outdated refugee transfers.

Amidst this striking data discrepancy, the Aceh Government has a target for all refugees to be in temporary housing before Eid al-Fitr 1447 H. The Aceh Regional Secretary, M. Nasir Syamaun, stated that all refugees had left their emergency tents before Eid al-Fitr.
Admittedly, meeting this target is not easy amidst various limitations in the affected areas, including the issue of data that is still not synchronized.

Single and valid data is a key requirement for making effective and targeted policies, especially since experience has shown the potential for abuse through manipulation of invalid data.

Accelerating the construction of temporary and permanent housing requires synergy and collaboration between regional and central governments. Several policies are slowing down their implementation on the ground due to overlapping work between the Aceh Government and the central government.

The implementation of the Task Force for the Acceleration of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction in Aceh has so far not shown any synergy with the Aceh Government. When questioned, several district leaders did not fully understand the benefits of the task force.

Oddly, the task force exists only in Aceh, not in North Sumatra and West Sumatra, even though those provinces were also affected by the floods. It is unclear what the central government's (read: Ministry of Home Affairs) rationale was for establishing the task force only in Aceh.

If the task force existed only in Aceh, rehabilitation and reconstruction should have been faster there than in the other two provinces. Most urgently, the task force should have helped accelerate the construction of temporary shelters (tempara) and the target of resettling refugees there before Eid al-Fitr.[]

---

Photo: Refugees at the Bireuen Regency Regent's Office.

_{Posted using SteemX}