Unsyiah-UN-Habitat
Accountability Index

The Architecture Department of Universitas Syiah Kuala (Banda Aceh) and UN-Habitat have been doing 3 rd party quality monitoring on housing reconstruction since October 2005. The programme monitors the quality of the provision process and of the outcomes of the permanent housing programmes of local and international NGOs and multilateral organizations. The respondents are beneficiaries who have received finished houses or for whom houses are near finishing. The purpose of the monitoring programme is to provide feedback on quality and to put judgment with local institutions.

So far, 74 locations representing the activities of about 35 different housing organizations in 4 districts in Aceh have been covered during the months
January to March 2006. The questionnaire contains more than 1000 data items and reflects the complexity of settlement reconstruction. The survey
measures needs, inputs, outcomes and satisfaction.
Also pictures, as-built floor plans and village plans are being collected.
Earlier results made available in the newsletter dealt with
construction quality and water and sanitation issues. CD-roms
with complete data sets are available.

This newsletter provides an accountability index. It is a simple index based
on two questions : did beneficiaries state that the process of obtaining new houses was without malfeasance, in terms of the provision process (selection etc.) and with regard to supply processes of labour and
materials ? Three secondary indicators on
the perceived quality of the preparatory process and
on satisfaction with the outcomes are added.

The outcomes in brief :

• Green (score between 8.0 and 10): 42% of locations
  show no or virtually no problems; processes are perceived to be clean
  and honest;
• Yellow (score between 5.0 and 7.9) : 31% of locations
  may show problems; respondents are not sure;
• Red (score between 0 to 4.9) : 27% of locations show considerable
  or even grave problems

This index relates to “robust processes” and not necessarily to corruption.
For instance, various forms of malfeasance (bending rules, collusion, etc.)
could have been caused within communities. Not surprisingly, good
organizations with multiple sample locations tend to show a problem location as well. Really strong organizations should have more “green locations”
than other.

Interestingly, Save the Children (1x yellow) and Oxfam (1x yellow, 2x red)
are in the bottom range. To their credit, these organizations have already
intervened and temporarily halted their programmes.
However, it also means that they are not the tip of the iceberg.
Save the Children and Oxfam appear to have failed on the “robustness test”
for their housing programmes – not only in the eyes of their auditors
but also of the recipient communities within the survey locations.

Overall, the index reconfirms earlier findings on construction quality and satisfaction within the monitoring programme. Across the board, construction quality is modest to good but reasonably safe. People are not too worried about water supply. Yet they ask for roads, drainage and sea defenses to make not so much individual houses but entire settlements a viable place to live again. The majority of the 100 housing organizations have been working hard to provide housing units, but now the issue is about infrastructure,
and of course sustained development in general. Putting up four walls and
a roof is just the beginning.
Building 40,000 housing units, so far, is just a start.

Results Accountability Index – bilingual (, 41 KB)

Concept Document Monitoring Programme (, 52 KB)

Latest Report on Construction Quality – SWG 3.4.06 (, 39 KB)

Summary Report on Livelihoods Issues Reported in 74 Locations (, 197 KB)


Other Issues

Village Planning workgroup
BRR, ADB, UN-Habitat and a number of other organizations have set up a Village Planning workgroup. Three meetings have been held so far. The purpose of the work group is to track the progress of village planning, sharpen the indicators for best practice in planning and set clearer standards linking village planning to detailed engineering. A driving force has been the ADB. Its programme aims at producing some 120 new village plans, especially along the West Coast. AIPRD also advanced its land mapping programme and added a village planning component on top of it. UN-Habitat has been collecting village plans from various organizations and makes them available in the on-line library (http://www.unhabitat-indonesia.org/library/db/map/index.html).
The tracking of progress indicators on mapping and planning will be added to the data base in the coming weeks.

Village Planning Workgroup Meeting I (, 213 KB)

Government

BRR – World Bank

BRR and the World Bank also looked into dark matter issues. On April 4, they published a report on illegal levies charged to truckers. Illegal levies between Banda Aceh and Medan have gone down as a result of the withdrawal of non-organic troops. However, new forms of extortion, corruption and protection fees have started to appear.

Trucking and Illegal Payments in Aceh (, 1 MB)

Perjalanan Truk dan Pungutan Liar di Aceh (, 1 MB)

Spotlight: Islamic Relief
Islamic Relief handed 150 houses type 36 to their intented owners and a children's centre to the village of Blang Krueng Kecamatan Baitussalam , Aceh Besar. The houses are distributed as follows; one hundred are for the support staff of the Syiah Kuala University and the other fifty have been given to the tsunami widows and disabled of Blang Krueng.

Islamic Relief Press Release (, 24KB)


UN-HABITAT
UN-Habitat, utilizing the UAE funds in consultation with the local authorities 
and communities, is now working in two villages in Kuta Raja subdistrict 
(Merduati and Peulanggahan villages).
These two villages are located with the city of Banda Aceh.
It  is  recorded  that  1,388  units  of  houses  were  damaged  in  the  two villages  which is  part  of  the  area  severely  affected  by  the  Tunami  of  26 December  2005  both  in terms  of  number  of  people  killed  and  property damaged.  To  date  UN-Habitat has  disbursed  funds  for  75  clusters  to construct  757  shelter  units.

Download Report (, 1MB)

UN-Habitat Project Office
Jl. T.M Pahlawan No. 3A Banda Aceh  NAD, Indonesia
Telp: +62 651 741 2525 / Fax: +62 651 25258
http://unhabitat-indonesia.org

UN-HABITAT - Fukuoka, Japan
http://www.fukuoka.unhabitat.org

Housing & Settlements Information@UNIMS
Visit the housing page at the UNIMS website for contact addresses and archives of policy documents, data, meeting notes, reports and other sector informations.


Housing & Library@UN-Habitat Banda Aceh
UN-Habitat (Banda Aceh) collects documents on housing reconstruction.
Visit our catalogue.If you can contribute your documents,
please contact Yayan at yayan@unhabitat-indonesia.org

For subscribe, please send email to :
diella@unhabitat-indonesia.org