Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara. Education officials in the natural disaster-prone province of East Nusa Tenggara are scrambling to implement disaster mitigation courses in the school curriculum — seven months after the government first raised the idea.

In March, the Ministry of National Education sent memos to all regional education officials about mainstreaming disaster risk reduction programs at schools. However, officials in East Nusa Tenggara’s capital of Kupang say they never got the message.

“We never received word about this new program, and I’m afraid we don’t have enough funds or experts to train teachers on this,” Lutfiah, head of the Kupang Education Office, said last week.

She was speaking after a seminar on Thursday in which Education Ministry officials and education activists from the nongovernmental group Plan Indonesia promoted the program to local stakeholders in the province.

Lutfiah said she would immediately bring the matter up with the Kupang Parent-Teacher Association to discuss how best to implement the new program.

“I believe the East Nusa Tenggara administration should also look into risk reduction for other social issues, given that the province borders East Timor and clashes between locals and East Timorese are common and can lead to the loss of lives,” she said.

The Education Ministry is working with the United Nations Development Program on the Safer Communities Through Disaster Risk Reduction project.

As part of this project, the government plans to hand out 1,000 information kits across East and West Nusa Tenggara. The packets will go to teachers, Plan Indonesia activists and community and youth leaders engaged in disaster prevention and mitigation.

However, as of last week, only 55 kits had so far been distributed in both provinces.

Hermana Somantri, from the government team that is putting together the information kits, said the program would help provide guidelines for coordinating disaster response efforts.

“Therefore, this program is very important as Indonesia is prone to natural disasters, particularly volcanic eruptions and earthquakes,” he said.

He also highlighted the importance of getting all stakeholders involved, including police, public works offices and health agencies. “When dealing with a disaster, you can’t assign just one group to handle everything,” he said.

“People from the education sector should also take part in this as Indonesians’ disaster preparedness remains low.”

Hermana blamed the lack of awareness in some regions on the impact of decentralization.

“We hope that through education, the younger generation will come to understand more about disasters — that they will always happen and that all we can do is prepare ourselves in order to minimize losses,” he said.

There should be no excuse for not implementing the program, he added.

NS Vijaya, from the ministry’s Curriculum Center, said all other efforts to complement the disaster risk reduction program would be welcomed.

“If people want to use local wisdom or other references to boost knowledge of disaster risks, we appreciate that,” he said. “The more references they have, the better informed and better prepared to respond to disasters people will be.”

Vijaya said the Curriculum Center had been working with the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) to develop textbooks to teach children about the weather.

“We’re breaking down complex weather issues into something that teachers and students can easily understand, as part of efforts to educate people about nature and disaster risk reduction,” he said.

Vanda Lengkong, project manager for disaster risk reduction at Plan Indonesia, said it was important to teach students about natural disasters from a young age.

“Children are the most vulnerable to disasters because they have the least amount of information about them,” she said.

“Educating them about disaster risk reduction is a long-term investment, as they’ll be able to help themselves as well as communicate to their peers, teachers and parents about disasters.”

In 2007, a law on disaster mitigation was passed that required all regions to draft disaster risk maps. However, only Jakarta, Aceh, East Java and West Kalimantan have so far complied.