Evaluation: Water rehabilitation for the tsunami victims of Aceh, Indonesia

DWHH / GAA has been working in Indonesia to support the population affected by the crisis
in East Timor between 1999 and 2002. Since then, the organisation was no longer active in
Indonesia and started its activities in Sumatra only with the tsunami relief intervention in
December 2004. As a result, DWHH / GAA did not have an own structure at its disposal and
also did not have the necessary expertise concerning water supply in Indonesia when the
decision was made to plan and implement this project. Only the technical expert employed in
May had the required expertise, but not with respect to the drilling of tube wells.
Parallel to the planning of the project, the structure of DWHH / GAA had to be set up and
people had to be employed in Medan and the district offices. This in itself was a challenging
task and required considerable resources, which were thus extremely limited. For the tsunami
intervention and the planning of new projects in general, it would have been mandatory to
have key-sector expertise available. In summary, it can be said that the rather limited resources available for the project planning and start-up resulted in a considerable working pressure right from the beginning and may have been an additional reason for the delay of the planned work.