Bali Governor Made Mangku Pastika has apologized for a major miscalculation in the number of evacuees who have flooded into refugee camps amid a looming threat of volcanic eruption from Mount Agung.
In a crisis, disaster agency numbers can often be inaccurate, as developments move quickly and people are hard to count — especially when they don’t all have proper identity cards. Speaking on Monday, Pastika said that the number of evacuees in need of refuge was underestimated by about half and that the government will be issuing special refugee identity cards to help keep track of evacuees from this point on.
Mount Agung remains on the highest alert level for a volcanic eruption since it was upgraded to a level IV on Sept. 22. Hundreds of volcanic earthquakes have been recorded daily at Agung signaling a forthcoming eruption and volcanologists have said an eruption is “more likely” than no eruption.
The government had previously said about 70,000 of the people who had evacuated from 28 villages around the volcano needed to return home because their homes weren’t in the red zone set of nine to 12 kilometers from the crater.
The governor had said such a huge amount of people had evacuated because of “fake news” spreading that their homes were in jeopardy. The governor had even threatened to cut civil servants’ salaries for evacuating if they were outside the danger zone, because they were taking valuable spaces in shelters and resources from the “real” refugees.
But it turns out that number who have homes inside the red zone is closer to 185,865 people, Pastika now says.
“I’m sorry I got the wrong information about the number of people living in 28 villages,” Pastika said, as quoted by Merdeka.
“Of the 28 villages, the number of evacuees should be 185,865 people coming from 54,788 families,” he added.
“So far there are 150,000 evacuees (at refugee camps), not more than that, even with the miscalculation. But I estimate that there are 30,000 or more who evacuated to their family’s homes, so now the refugee card will help record this data, looking for shortcomings.”
Village heads will work the government to get residents from their communities to register.
The card will not only help with counting the evacuated population, it can also be used by evacuees for treatment with medical providers partnering with the Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan).
