President: Public Asks Not To Politicize Yogyakarta Disaster
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has asked all parties not to turn the handling of the Yogyakarta earthquake disaster into a political issue merely because the government has not declared the event a national disaster.
“Do not disturb the central and provincial governments’ efforts to help the victims of last Saturday’s deadly earthquake because it is a humanitarian issue. I don’t want it to be politicized,” Antara news agency reports Monday, quoting the President as saying.
Yudhoyono made the remark to respond to questions from various parties on why the government had not declared the earthquake a national disaster in spite of the fact that it has claimed more than 5,000 lives and left thousands of people homeless.
The president said the mitigation of the impact of the disaster should not be viewed through its status but through the way it was dealt with, because all systems from the central, provincial and regional administrations had been running well since the first day of the disaster.
“We have mobilized all resources and funds for the handling of the disaster,” the president said.
He added that the central, provincial and regional governments were focusing their attention on dealing with the thousands of fatalities and providing medication for injured victims.
“The best thing for me is the humanitarian issue.
Therefore, the emergency response phase, the allocation of economic resources and social assistance are our primary concern,” Yudhoyono said.
Earlier, the president said the period of emergency response to the devastating earthquake in Yogyakarta and Central Java would be from May to August followed by a rehabilitation and reconstruction process from September 2006 to September 2007.
“My policy as president is to set the time frame for the emergency response at May-August with an allocation of Rp100 billion in funds.
“And after that, a one-year rehabilitation and reconstruction process with an allocation of Rp1.1trillion in funds,” Yudhoyono said after chairing a coordination meeting on an evaluation of the handling of quake victims at the Agung building here.
On the occasion, Yudhoyono noted that the allocated funds would be distributed to the families of fatalities and the families of injured victims for medication and reconstruction of their damaged houses.
Latest reports on Monday said the death toll in Saturday morning’s earthquake had risen to more than 5,000.
Most of the dead victims were in Bantul district which bore the brunt of the earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale.
BERNAMA