Business Continuity, Command & Control, Emergency Comms

Indonesia govt admits poor disaster strategy

By Alice Kok | 22 April 2009

Many of Indonesia’s regions remain unprepared for disasters and have no prevention or management strategy despite the country’s high vulnerability to floods, landslides and earthquakes, says government officials.

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“Disaster management requires urgent attention because Indonesia is the second most vulnerable country in the world in terms of disasters,” Kausar A. Saleh, Director of General Governance at the Home Ministry said.

In 2007, the central government gave provincial and regency authorities a one-year period to form regional disaster management agencies (BPBD). However, out of the country’s 33 provinces, only six—West Java, Central Java, Bengkulu, West Sumatra, Southeast Sulawesi and North Sulawesi—have begun establishing such agencies.

According to data from the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), the sluggishness of this process is dangerous given the country’s high susceptibility to disasters—as many as 343 disasters occurred in the country in 2008, the most frequent of which were floods, typhoons and landslides.

Last year, the disasters have caused trillions of rupiah (US$1 is equivalent to approximately 10,900 rupiah) in losses and claimed the lives of more than 245 people.

Natural factors, such as the archipelago’s location along the Pacific ‘ring of fire’, as well as man-made factors, such as environmental destruction and unchecked development (like the recent Situ Gintung dam burst in Tangerang which killed almost 100 people) have made the country a hotbed of disasters.

Efforts to prevent disasters have been sparse. Areas that have not succeeded in establishing disaster management agencies currently rely on Coordination Boards for Disaster Mitigation (Satkorlak) to deal with the problems.

“These boards however, react only after a disaster has occurred and do not provide necessary preventive measures in disaster-prone areas,” says Saleh.