Tsunami relief is overshadowed by corruption

AS relief officials struggle to reach homeless tsunami survivors, another concern is making the rounds of donor meetings: the threat of corruption.

“We are concerned that the image of it would hold people back from sending money, because they fear the money would end up in the wrong pockets,” said Michael Elmquist, head of UN relief efforts in Indonesia’s Aceh province, yesterday.

Corruption was expected to be on the agenda when world leaders, including UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, met yesterday in Jakarta to co-ordinate relief efforts.

Concerns appear to focus most on Indonesia, which is ranked among the world’s most corrupt countries by Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog group.

Indonesia’s jails are filled with officials charged with graft, and the Aceh governor is on trial for allegedly taking money which was meant for villages and padding the purchase price of a helicopter.

Several relief efforts in Indonesian regions beset by civil conflict have been marred by corruption. Aid officials in Ambon, where Christians and Muslims have fought for years, are on trial for exaggerating refugee figures and pocketing the additional state funds.

Local anti-graft activists fear that more than 30% of the $1 billion projected to be spent on Indonesia’s recovery could be stolen, about the average that disappears each year from the national government’s budget.

They are particularly concerned because the aid is going to Aceh, where a decades-old separatist insurgency has left local authority essentially in the hands of the Indonesian military, an institution often accused of graft.

So far, no tsunami-related graft has been reported in Sri Lanka or India, but activists warn that it is only a matter of time.