1.5M Still Homeless From Tsunami

Only 20% Of Displaced Are In Permanent Homes; Aid To Pick Up

(AP) 
Communities also needed to provide input about the types of houses they wanted.

"The reality is that rebuilding at speed involves a difficult balancing act: people want houses quickly but they also want to be consulted and the houses to be of top quality," said Oxfam's director Jeremy Hobbs.

"In some cases the rebuilding process may actually have been too fast."

But other delays should have been avoided, the group said in its year-end report, noting that governments were slow to allocate new and appropriate land for rebuilding and there was often little clarity over coastal buffer zones.

"Are we happy with the progress in Aceh? No, we are not at all," said Andrew Steer, the World Bank's country director for Indonesia, which is donating money to Aceh's reconstruction.

He said officials and nongovernment organizations initially promised more than they could produce.

"We should have figured out the simple arithmetic, which was that you simply can't build more than 30,000 (permanent) houses in the first year," Steer said.

Aid and government agencies say that by the end of the year:

In Indonesia, 18,149 of the minimum 80,000 permanent shelters needed will be completed.

In Sri Lanka, approximately 5,000 permanent houses out of the 78,000 needed will have been built.

In India's worst affected state, Tamil Nadu, the government plans to build 130,000 permanent homes. So far only 1,000 have been completed.