Frustration and anger mount for Indonesian mud-flow victims

Apr 25, 2007, 12:37 GMT

Sidoarjo, Indonesia - Mulyaji sits near a pool of mud that has inundated his house in Sidoarjo, an industrial town in East Java. He arrived there with his wife and two kids one steamy afternoon last week after a two-hour motorcycle ride in the hopes of salvaging anything of value from the destroyed building.

They are not alone in their misfortune. All the houses in Siring village have been destroyed in Indonesia's worst environmental disaster: an out-of-control flow of mud generated from a gas-drilling accident that has displaced more than 12,000 people and now covers 6 square kilometres.

As the disaster approaches its one-year anniversary in May, a government team of experts has been unable to halt the relentless flow of mud from what is now an open crater. In their desperation, they have even employed paranormals to try to stop it, adding a bit of humour to a tragedy that has affected so many lives.

'This drama has been dragging on in our life for too long now - you can make a soap opera out of it,' said Mulyaji, 50, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name.

'It's very sad to see the village that I've been living in for 50 years now taken over by mud and we have to rent houses that are so far away from the city,' he said from his former home, from which he was only able to salvage some wood.

The accident occurred when Lapindo Brantas - an Indonesian company owned by the family of business tycoon and politician Aburizal Bakrie, the country's minister of people's welfare - apparently hit a mud volcano while drilling at a depth of nearly 3,000 metres.

Police investigators said the company did not install mandatory safety casings in the lower depths of the well, which would have prevented the mud from escaping. Several company executives are now under criminal investigation.

The crater spews out about 150,000 cubic metres of mud per day that have inundated more than 6,000 houses in 12 nearby villages, a toll road, railway tracks and factories.

A government disaster team has attempted to stem the mud flow by pumping it into a nearby river and building dams to contain it, but that has led to more accidents.

'The temporary dam that was built by Lapindo collapsed, and so much mud was just flowing and raging into our houses that we did not have time to save our belongings,' Maryatun Kiflia, Mulyaji's wife, said.

'All I could remember was my son, and I was crying, looking for him while trying to save myself,' she said.

While her son, Chairul Rizal, 12, was later found safe, her family's life has changed dramatically in the past year. They now have to rent a house far away from Sidoarjo because emergency funds given by Lapindo were not enough to rent a house near their village. As a result, Mulyaji lost his job, and Chairul attends a different school - if the bus shows up to take him.

The family's sorrow has now turned to rage because of foot-dragging by the Indonesian government and, more specifically, Lapindo, on compensating the thousands of people who were impacted by the disaster.

The company doled out money for displaced families to rent new homes for two years and for a daily food allowance. However, Lapindo has so far ignored two orders by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to pay more than 420 million dollars in compensation to residents whose houses, property and businesses were destroyed.

Frustration has been mounting in recent weeks, with displaced villagers staging rallies in East Java province and Jakarta demanding immediate cash payments instead of resettlement. The crisis has become so politically burdensome to Yudhoyono that police recently stopped protestors in East Java from boarding trains and buses to Jakarta although some managed to get to the capital anyway and rallied outside the Presidential Palace.

At least 3,000 people who have refused resettlement have been living in the Pasar Porong Baru area, 15 minutes from the mud-flow site, in temporary shelter provided by the local government.

'We have been neglected so far, and I lost my job because the factory where I worked was flooded by Lapindo's mud,' said Muhammad Syaiful, 27, from Renokenongo village, which was also inundated. Syaiful, his wife and their 8-month-old daughter have been living in a 3-by-3.5-metre room in a refuge centre for almost five months.

'We are so frustrated, but we don't know where else to go because we feel that the government is not on our side,' he said angrily. 'We want cash compensation, and until we see that, we'll stay here for as long as it takes.

'In its latest desperate effort to stop the mud flow, the government disaster team is dropping hundreds of giant concrete balls, each weighing 200 kilograms, into the crater in hopes of stopping the flow.

'This is not 'mission impossible,' but we are still trying to figure out how to stop the mud flow,' said Sofyan Hadi, a member of the newly established Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency. 'We also plan to drop 500 more concrete balls.'