Mud volcano's victims wait for company aid

Peter Alford, Jakarta correspondent
From: The Australian
May 25, 2011

NIRWAN Bakrie, head of the business group widely blamed for Sidoarjo's "mud volcano" disaster, says his companies will meet their financial obligations to the victims by the end of next year and stay around after that.

"We have invested about $US700 million ($663m) there so far for the people, for society and infrastructure and we are going to keep being there," Mr Bakrie said yesterday as the fifth anniversary of the mud volcano's first eruption approached.

"We will have a new head office in Sidoarjo for the east (of Java), so our involvement there will go beyond 2012."

As the people of Sidoarjo district on the outskirts of Surabaya, East Java, ready for the anniversary, more than 40,000 villagers have been displaced. Two villages have been engulfed by the vast mud lake, 11 are damaged, hundreds of hectares of farmland have been ruined and levies are crumbling.

Though daily volumes of new mud have lessened, there is no finish in sight. Based on similar eruptions elsewhere, scientists speculate the slow-motion disaster might continue for another 20 years or more.

A Bakrie subsidiary, Lapindo Brantas, was drilling for natural gas at the site on May 28, 2006, when the eruption of boiling mud and methane began.

Though bowing to an order by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to pay Rp3.8 trillion for compensation and containment, the group refused to acknowledge Lapindo's culpability. It argued that the eruption was most likely caused by the Jogjakarta earthquake the day before, and a controversial Russian study last year suggested earlier quakes also contributed.

Most interested scientists reject that idea.

The controversy is likely to resume tomorrow when "Lusi" - short for lumpur (mud) Sidoarjo - experts gather in Surabaya for a convention organised by Humanitus Foundation.

The Australian charity is working with the Indonesian government on a project to relieve Lusi's burden on its victims, perhaps even helping to find a way to stop the flow.

Bakrie opponents are once again assailing the group, claiming it has not met its obligations, mostly in the form of compensation payments and buying land and building houses on a new estate.

East Java's Governor Soekarwo claims the group is Rp452 billion ($49.7m) in arrears, but Mr Bakrie says delays have been caused mostly by difficulties settling land purchases.

Mr Bakrie's agreement with the central government is to complete its payments by the end of next year, he says, and that deadline will be met.

Source

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