Indonesia's tsunami-hit province of Aceh urgently needs more heavy equipment to clean the debris as part of its rebuilding efforts.
The equipment it needs includes back-hoes, graders and bulldozers.
The equipment now operating in the province is not sufficient to clean the large destroyed areas, the Acehnese daily Serambi Indonesia said Thursday.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has demanded to complete cleaning the devastated areas from the ruins and evacuating bodies within two weeks.
However, volunteers and social workers said that it is difficult to achieve the target due to limited heavy equipment.
They said that to move the debris, it needs at least 240 heavy machines.
"I am confused, in this difficult situation there is no additional equipment," said an operator of heavy equipment.
The operator said that the cleaning had to be delayed if more bodies were found among the debris.
Meanwhile, an official of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of the United Nation, Enayet Madani, said that they would send more equipment for cleaning, evacuation, and distribution of aids this week.
"There will be a lot of heavy machinery to come from Bangkok and other places very soon," he told Xinhua.
Tsunami disaster swept the southwestern coastal areas of the province on Dec. 26, killing more than 108,809 people in Indonesia, mostly in Aceh. The catastrophe seriously damaged the coastal areas in the provincial city of Banda Aceh.
(Xinhua News Agency January 13, 2005)
