Govt to Send 400 Young Engineers to Lombok
Minister of Public Works and Public Housing Basuki Hadimuljono briefs 400 young engineers to be assigned to Lombok Island, Jakarta, Tuesday (28/8). (Photo by: Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing/ES).
In order to assist the quake-affected residents to rebuild their houses, Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing to send 400 young engineers who are also Civil Servant Candidates (CPNS) of 2017 to become community facilitators in building earthquake-resistant houses in Lombok Island, West Nusa Tenggara Province.
The 400 facilitators will be dispatched gradually starting Thursday, 30 August 2018 by using the Indonesian National Defence Forces (TNI)s Hercules aircraft, Minister of Public Works and Public Housing Basuki Hadimuljono said while briefing the CPNS who will be assigned to Lombok Island.
Furthermore, Basuki said that the repair is going to start on 1 September 2018 and Vice President Jusuf Kalla has ordered to complete the project within 6 months so that the Island can recover faster.
The affected residents will help each other to repair and reconstruct damaged houses assisted by these facilitators. Houses must be built with better quality and must be earthquake-resistant because there are still potential for earthquakes in the future, Basuki said.
According to the Minister, he will form a team of 9-10 facilitators for assisting the repair and reconstruction process of 100-150 houses. Since the quake has damaged a lot of houses in various areas of the Island, this process requires assistance from a lot of facilitators. He has estimated that it requires 2,000 facilitators to repair around 74 thousand houses.
Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing also invites the involvement of engineering students from various private and public universities to be part of the facilitator team as part of their compulsory community work (KKN) in accelerating the repair and reconstruction process, Basuki said.
Meanwhile, Director General of Cipta Karya Danis H. Sumadilaga said that the Government provided funding assistance of Rp50 million for severely damaged houses, Rp30 million for moderately damaged houses and Rp10 million for lightly damaged houses.
Strengthening of house structures is not only applied to severely damaged houses but also to moderately and lightly damaged houses because almost all damage on those houses are caused by bad building structure such as the absence of columns and steel reinforcement.
Meanwhile, public facilities such as markets, schools, places of worship, community health centers and hospitals are targeted to be able to return to service by December 2018.
The exact number of damaged public facilities is still being verified. In the meantime, currently, there are 330 damaged schools consisting of 14 kindergartens, 175 primary schools, 67 junior high schools or madrasah Tsanawiyah (MTs), and 74 senior high schools or madrasah aliyah (MA). In addition to that, 6 places of worship, 118 health facilities including hospitals, community health centers (Puskesmas), village health centers (Puskesdes), and integrated health posts (Posyandu), as well as 22 markets were also damaged by the quake. (BKP Kementerian PUPR/ES) (GWH/MMB/Naster)
