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The project has helped repair roads, expand port facilities, and restore power supply. It also provided jobs at a time of soaring unemployment.
Hundreds of people were killed in the fighting that began after the people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia on 30 August 1999; hundreds of thousands more fled from their homes, many of them becoming refugees in West Timor.
When United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces entered East Timor in October 1999, up to 85% of the country’s infrastructure had been destroyed. As the UN set about establishing peace and an interim administration, the international donor community set up a Trust Fund for East Timor, with the World Bank as its trustee.
ADB and the World Bank manage projects financed on a grant basis from the trust fund.
Among these is a two-phase $38.8 million Emergency Infrastructure Rehabilitation Project managed by ADB since April 2000. The project has helped repair roads, expand port facilities, and restore power supply. In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, the project reduced congestion at Dili port and ensured major roads were kept open for relief supplies to the people most in need of them.
Today, the roads give farmers access to markets, and the port facilities provide opportunities for trade.
The project has also provided jobs at a time of soaring unemployment. Although official figures are sketchy, unemployment and underemployment are visible in the towns and villages of East Timor. Everywhere, people complain of falling incomes or—worse—no income at all.
Julio Cabral is working on a road project near Lautem. He supervises workers from all over the country. Mr. Cabral himself is from the village of Laga.
“There was no work in my village,” he says. As a supervisor, he earns about $150 a month. His laborers are paid on a piece rate basis, according to the amount they work every day. One of the workers, Jose, is paid on this basis. He is unsure how much he will make in a month—less than $100, he thinks.
Whatever it is, he will send it home to his parents, five brothers, and two sisters, who live in Dili. He puts in long hours of manual labor in the grueling heat far from his family—but at least he has a job. “In Dili, there was simply no work,” he says.
Burned and abandoned homes provide terrible reminders of the conflict. But there are also hopeful signs of progress.
Many people are rebuilding their homes, electricity and water supply systems are being restored, and children are going to school again.
The subdistrict town of Maubisse lost its electricity supply in 1999 when the power station was burned down. As the UN set up an interim administration, UN peace- keeping forces provided power to the subdistrict office and the hospital. But when East Timor became independent in May 2002, the UN drastically reduced its presence in the country.
The ADB-administered Emergency Infrastructure Rehabilitation Project is helping restore the supply of electricity to the subdistrict office, hospital, schools, and homes in Maubisse Subdistrict. Several schools in the subdistrict have computers and educational CDs donated by Portugal.
“But without electricity we can’t use them,” points out Subdistrict Coordinator Daniel da Silva Ramalho. And the Community Health Center Hospital, a 13-bed facility, needs a steady supply of electricity to properly store vaccines and medicines.
The project is helping rebuild this small half-island nation after the carnage of 1999. As East Timor at long last joins the community of nations as an independent state, the project continues to support its people intheir efforts to rebuild their shattered lives.
In December 1999, 2 months after peacekeeping forces of the United Nations (UN) entered East Timor to restore peace, the international donor community set up a trust fund to provide grant assistance to help rebuild the country. ADB and the World Bank propose and manage projects financed from the Trust Fund for East Timor (TFET).
ADB is responsible for managing TFET-funded projects worth $52.8 million. Since 1999, ADB has also committed $8 million in technical assistance grants to help prepare projects and build capacity.
The conflict that followed East Timor’s vote for independence from Indonesia in 1999 devastated this tiny half-island country of 800,000 people. Hundreds of people were killed and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes. Up to 85% of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed.
An emergency infrastructure rehabilitation project managed by ADB since April 2000 has helped repair roads, expand port facilities, and restore power supply. Other infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the conflict has been rebuilt and upgraded under a water supply and sanitation rehabilitation project.
Under a microfinance project designed to give poor families access to credit, ADB has supported the establishment of a microfinance institution in the capital city of Dili, with branches planned in three districts over the next year. ADB also manages a project to rehabilitate and upgrade fisheries facilities at Hera Port, near Dili.
Since 2000, ADB has provided technical assistance grants to build capacity in different sectors, improve governance and public sector management, strengthen development planning, and empower communities and local government bodies.
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Learn more about how ADB's activities in East Timor
Read the news release - East Timor Becomes ADB's 61st Member
Visit our East Timor site
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