MERAPI RESIDENTS NEED RELOCATION

By Andi Abdussalam

Jakarta, Nov 3 (ANTARA) - Tens of thousands of villagers living in the slopes of Mt Merapi in Central Java which has erupted several times since last week,  indeed need relocation, yet the government seems unlikely to move them to other permanent locations.          Areas in the danger zones have been crippled by hot ashes and other volcanic avalanches. Mt Merapi --which erupted on Tuesday last week, killing 23 people and forcing 20,000 others to evacuate -- erupted again on Wednesday afternoon which expert said three time bigger than that of last week.          Seeing the impact of the eruption,  Yogyakarta governor Sultan Hamengkubuwono X said that some people displaced by Mt. Merapi eruption may need permanent relocation from their villages as their farming fields would not produce any crops in the next 10 years.          "What we can consider for now is that those farming fields would not be able to be planted with crops for the next ten years. So, from where can these people eat (if not we relocate them)?" the Sultan was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying on Wednesday.           However, it seems that the government would like to rebuild residents' houses rather than relocating them.           Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf Jufri said that locals living on the slopes of Mt Merapi should not  be relocated as a result of the volcano's activities.  "People living around Mt Merapi already understand (the volcano's conditions) so that there is no need to relocate them," the minister said after inspecting a refugees evacuation center (TPA) in Muntilan subdistrict, Magelang district, on Tuesday.          The minister said the  people living around Mt Merapi had been residing  there for years, even from generation to generation. "What remains to be done is to try to understand  Merapi's behavior where in certain conditions, when posing a danger threat, the local people should avoid the disaster, and after a disaster is over, they return again," he said.          According to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,  the conditions of the Merapi victims were different from the conditions experienced by the victims of tsunami in Mentawai Islands, where their settlements must be located from coastal areas to other places with a height of about 30 to 40 meters above the sea surface.         Therefore, the government is even planning to reconstruct and  rebuild the houses which were destroyed by Mount Merapi eruption. Visiting a refugee site at Purwobinangun village in Seleman district, Central Java, President Yudhoyono said the government had a duty to rebuild the houses of the victims of Mt Merapi eruption.          The president said the government would help the victims from emergency response until the reconstruction and rehabilitation process of the houses being destroyed in the disaster.          "The government will help rebuild the houses destroyed by hot clouds from Mt Merapi, but the important thing is that the victims should feel safe first at the refugee shelters provided by the government," the president said.          For this purpose, Yudhoyono asked local governments to finish the emergency response until Mt Merapi no longer endangered and posed a threat to the local people.          He said that local governments should work until their duties were finished so that the locals could return to their respective homes. "You should not be negligent. You should finish your tasks until the end of Merapi's activities, until our brothers could return to their respective places," the president said.           After the end of the emergency response the local governments still have to continue working on the rehabilitation phase and clean places covered by volcanic ashes.          "Usually there is blessing in the form of soil fertility where locals could capitalize on," he said.          In the meantime, on Wednesday afternoon, Mt Merapi erupted again which was described as three times bigger than that on October 26 last week. Following the eruption, head of the Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Center, Surono, said his side would propose the extension of the danger zone  of the world most active volcano.          He said that the danger zone should be extended from 10 km to 15 km from the mount's peak. If the danger zones are expanded it would cover some of the refugee camps.          However,  Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono X said there was no decision yet to move Merapi evacuees in Umbulharjo, Kepuharjo and Glagaharjo to safer places.  "Indeed the head of the Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Center, Surono, has said that the safety zone would be expanded up to 15 kilometers away from the peak. However it was  still a mere proposal which still has yet to be discussed further with the ministry of energy and mineral resources in Jakarta," the governor of Yogyakarta province where part of the Merapi mountain is located said at the Merapi Disaster Main Command Post here on Wednesday evening.          He said until now no evacuee had been moved from the three evacuation centers yet.          The Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Agency has said it would expand the safe zone from 10 kilometers to 15 kilometers away from the mountain's peak.       The mountain erupted again on Wednesday evening and at 2.44pm it spewed huge hot clouds of ash for more than an hour as far as nine kilometers away.          "We have decided to expand the zone to cover evacuation centers because it was reported the flow of hot clouds had now gone quite far," Surono said.     (T.A014/a/H-NG/a014) 04-11-2010 00:11: