Assisting the Recovery of Disaster-Affected Areas in Aceh, the Ministry of Home Affairs Departs 1,138 Praja IPDN

1. The Minister of Home Affairs (Mendagri) Tito Karnavian releases thousands of IPDN village personnel to help restore disaster locations in Aceh through Terminal 1 of the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Tangerang, Banten. (Photo: ANTARA)

TANGERANG - A total of 1,138 praja of the Institute of Internal Government (IPDN) were sent by the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri) to help restore village areas affected by disasters in the Aceh region, especially in Aceh Tamiang and North Aceh. The delivery of thousands of IPDN praja personnel to the disaster site was carried out through Soekarno-Hatta International Airport (Soetta), Tangerang, Banten, through collaboration with the Lion Air Group on Saturday. "Today I deliberately let them go to give them motivation and also later Insya Allah, I will go there to receive them in the form of a ceremony together with the local government," said Home Minister (Mendagri) Tito Karnavian in Tangerang, Saturday, reported by ANTARA. He said the delivery of the 1,138 IPDN praja was carried out in stages, Currently there are 413 personnel who have been dispatched to Medan and then 414 personnel are deployed again to Aceh. "For today 413 personnel, tomorrow 414 personnel will enter the second phase, then the third phase 179 personnel. And those who are already in the location are called advance teams, there are 132 personnel so a total of 11,138 personnel," he said.

The Minister of Home Affairs said that of the thousands of IPDN personnel, they were assigned to help post-disaster by focusing on areas that were considered to be the most severely affected, especially areas where the government was not running due to severe damage. He noted that there were 22 villages that were lost due to the disaster, with details of 13 villages in Aceh, eight villages in North Sumatra, and one village in West Sumatra. In addition, it was recorded that as many as 1,580 village offices in the three provinces were affected, so that village governments could not function normally. "Almost all of the affected areas are 52 areas. In the regions and cities in the three provinces in Aceh, 18 in North Sumatra, then three in West Sumatra. West Sumatra is the fastest to recover and only three areas of main attention, namely Agam," he said. He also mentioned that the Aceh region is currently the largest impact, namely 1,455 village offices are affected, followed by North Sumatra with 93 village offices affected, and West Sumatra with 32 village offices. Then, he continued, the North Aceh and Aceh Tamiang regions are the areas with the largest number of affected villages.

"Most of them have recovered, there are only five who need our attention, namely Central Tapanuli, North Tapanuli, South Tapanuli, Sibulga City, and for Aceh, it is the most severe impact of 18 districts, 11 have improved a lot, the seven others need specific attention to be recovered from Aceh-Tamiang, Aceh-Utara, Aceh-Timur, Aceh-Tengah, then Gayo Lues," said the Minister of Home Affairs. He added that during the assignment, the IPDN praja and their caregivers would carry out two main tasks during the assignment period. First, to help post-disaster cleaning activities in the affected areas. Second, they will support the recovery and reactivation of the government so that basic services to the community can resume. "The second one is to revive villages that are quite a lot more than 200, there are those who have not run the dukcapil, other public services must be able to be turned on, their target time is a month, and this is included in the curriculum. We consider this as a real part of the lecture work," said Minister of Home Affairs Tito Karnavian.