GOVT PREPARING 33,000-MEMBER TASK FORCE TO FACE DISASTERS

Bogor, Dec 4 (ANTARA) - The government is preparing a 33,000-member task force (Tagana) throughout the country to face various natural disasters such as landslides, earthquakes, floods, a social affairs ministry official said.

"About 3,000 Tagana volunteers from 33 province gathered at the Cibubur Camping site in East Jakarta this morning for a national ceremony led by Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf Al-Jufri," Social Affairs Ministry Spokesman Sapto Waluyo said in his SMS text message to ANTARA on Friday.

He said that Tagana is the Social Affairs Ministry's leading volunteers' team in the handling of a natural disaster so that its members must have skills and high ability that needed to be continuously be improved.

Therefore, he said, the ministry would set up a special team of Tagana which had the high skills to handle the victims of earthquakes, floods and landslides.

Based on its 2010 - 2014 strategic plan, the ministry of social affairs will increase the capacity of its disaster handling system, including increasing the skills of the Tagana volunteers which totaled about 33,000 throughout the country.

"The ministry will produce a road-map to disaster-prone regions so that the number of volunteers needed could be calculated. In this case, the ministry has to coordinate with the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB)," he said.

In the meantime, BNPB head Syamsul Maarif said recently that Tagana members were able to penetrate isolated areas in the recent earthquake-West Sumatra to distribute food supplies to the victims.

He said that with their recognized skills Tagana volunteers must be able to identify and penetrate isolated areas which had not yet obtained logistics assistance to help the victims survive.

"Tagana workers should show to the people that human beings should not be hopeless in the face of disasters," Waluyo said.