IN 2008, PIONEER LEE BEE WAH was at the forefront of bringing long-awaited joy to the entire nation of Singapore. The Singapore team had won silver at the Beijing Olympics, Singapore's first Olympic medal in 48 years. Bee Wah is the President of the Singapore Table Tennis Association. Her team went on to beat China in the finals of the World Championships in Moscow.

Sporting glory is only one of Bee Wah's achievements. She is also active on the entrepreneurial scene. After a 12-year employee stint first with Singapore Technologies Construction and later Wing Tai Properties Management, she founded LBW Consultants LLP in 1996. The firm which provides civil, structural and project management consultancy brings in $2 million a year. Her company had been awarded the Rotary-Asme Top Entrepreneur of the Year Award. As a registered engineer, she was given the title ‘Er’.

Bee Wah is deeply convinced of the importance of her trade. “Civil and structural engineering creates and sustains the very infrastructure of society,” she said. “It improves the basic quality of life.” That conviction led her to become the president of the Institution of Engineers Singapore (IES), the first woman to hold the post.

In 1999, IES wanted to recommend her to be a Nominated Member of Parliament. She consulted Inderjit Singh, an MP cum fellow pioneer. “I became one of his grassroots leaders and came under the PAP's radar,” she said. During the 2006 general elections, she was elected as part of the Ang Mo Kio GRC team led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Another lady making waves as an entrepreneur is Tan Gek Noi. When she started IM&P Services in 1993 to provide MNCs with manpower from China, there was only one employee: herself. Today, the company, which is now called Xcellink has surpassed her “wildest dream” in terms of scope, staff strength and revenue. It enjoys a turnover of $23 million with some 1,000 people on its payroll, a far cry from the one-woman outfit almost two decades ago. Nowadays, Xcellink offers customers IT-managed services in the areas of data center and call center management and various IT support functions.

IN THE 1980s AND EARLY 1990s, prior to the advent of mobile phones, pagers were popular with people on the move. When a page is made, the caller's telephone number will appear on the receiver's pager. The receiver can then call back from a landline. At that time, Motorola was the pager giant in the world. It commanded a whopping 85 per cent of global pager sales.

After graduation, Chan Lai Yee joined Motorola as a Research and Development engineer. The company was one of three winners of the first Malcolm Baldrige National Quality award. The United States Congress launched the award to inspire the pursuit of quality in American businesses. In 1986, Motorola introduced the Bravo numeric pager, the world's best-selling pager. Lai Yee's job was to refine the gadget to meet the consumers’ insatiable demand for pagers in various colors. Her colleague Lim Geok Yian was a process engineer there. They were working for Motorola in its heyday. Revenue soared from $14 billion in 1989 to $24 billion in 1993 after the company successfully transitioned from pagers to mobile phones. In August 2011, Google announced the acquisition of Motorola's mobile phones business under the Motorola Mobility Division. Today, Geok Yian has taken on a global role supporting Supplier Development in the Motorola Solutions Division.

Another big company with a lady pioneer's presence was Matsushita Electronics. Tey Week Lian designed their radio cassette recorders. In the 1980s, there was no CD, MP3 or smartphone. Music lovers turned to cassettes or records for their fix. After honing her design skills at Matsushita, she moved to Thomson Consumer Electronics, a French powerhouse. She designed all their televisions. Thomson moved its manufacturing to cheaper countries in 1994 but kept the research and development here. In 2001, Week Lian joined Fuyu Corporation, a subcontractor for Hewlett-Packard (HP). She designed the printer hardware for HP.

The lady NTI pioneers were spread out in various big names in the electronics manufacturing industry. Yang Hsao Hsien is a semiconductor veteran, having worked at Texas Instruments, Fairchild Semiconductor, National Semiconductor and STATS ChipPAC.

AN NTU JUNIOR WHOM LUCY TAN did not know gave her a memorable moment as a Human Resource (HR) manager at 3M, a United States conglomerate. The mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate came for an interview for an engineering position. She had the most depth compared with five other candidates. “I did not let her know that I was her senior but I was proud of her performance,” said Lucy. The NTU graduate got the job, beating the rest from overseas universities.

Another highlight was leading the 3Mteam to win the MAXA Manufacturing Excellence award in 2007. “That was my proudest moment,” said Lucy. A panel of international judges decides on the award, the highest accolade for manufacturing excellence in Singapore.

Lucy is well placed to do a HR job. She had held an operational role and understands 3M's business. Lucy said, “I positioned HR as a partner to help other departments achieve their goals. The business units trusted me and gave me the buy-in.”

In order to further equip herself, Lucy took up a part-time HR diploma course. She learned HR planning, recruitment, compensation and benefits, and employee relations. The transition was not too difficult for Lucy. The HR director of a business unit mentored her and her HR colleagues helped her. Lucy spent four years in HR from 2006 to 2010.

Excelling in the HR operations of a giant company such as 3Mis no mean feat. 3MCompany produces thousands of products for diverse markets. Its core strength is applying its more than 42 distinct technology platforms — often in combination — to a wide array of customer needs. With $35 billion in sales, 3Memploys 76,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 60 countries.

Today, Lucy is back to her operational role as the Regional Manufacturing and Supply Chain Manager. Her HR role benefitted her. “It prepared me for my current role where I have to liaise with colleagues from China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and the Americas,” said Lucy.

Another lady pioneer who found her engineering background an asset in HR is Joesphine Chua. Josephine was the business HR development manager at Avago.

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT runs deep in the NTI Mechanical and Production engineering pioneers. Sixteen of them started their own businesses. Their goods and services include engineering consultancy, marine products, sofa leather, printing solutions and books. Their reasons for taking the plunge: a desire to be the boss, the lack of challenges in their salaried job and business opportunities.

A prime example is Eddie Ng Seng Leong. Married to a Taiwanese, he saw a niche in supplying European leather to sofa makers in Taiwan. In 1992, he shifted to Taiwan and pumped in his life savings of $50,000 in a joint venture with a local partner. It paid off handsomely. Ligo Leather Enterprise became the largest supplier of sofa leather in Taiwan. In 18 years, their assets soared from $500,000 to $60 million. Wanting to replicate their success in China, Ligo set up a branch there in 2002.

However, China was not an easy market to penetrate for Philip Kee Tuang Loh. The former naval officer started Luke Philips Consultants in 1991. It helps companies implement the ISO9000 Quality Management Systems. The ISO9000 is a family of standards to ensure that companies meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders. Luke Philips was among the consultancy services pioneers in China. Things went well until the turn of the millennium. Competition was stiff and there was an on-going price war. In 2003, Philip closed down all branches in China and returned to Singapore. Many of the classmates that Philip roped in as consultants, such as Khong Cheng Mun, Lee Ngee Boon, and Sng Soon Heng, eventually started their own consulting firms.

The yearning to explore new things prompted Vaidyanathan Srikrishnan (Sri) to become an entrepreneur. Sri had a fascinating 12-year stint at Esso. He started his own company after feeling that “there was nothing more to learn at Esso”. In 1997, he set up NorthLab with fellow NTI pioneer A Murugappan and two others. The firm sells, rents, repairs and calibrates offshore oil and gas equipment. Being the boss was not easy but he pressed on. “Finances were tight and at times, there was no salary to bring home,” said Sri.

AT ONE TIME, Yeap Khek Teong's job was to design weapons for national defence. His track record of deadly devices included the howitzer, an artillery piece with a long barrel for launching projectiles. Khek Teong was a manufacturing engineer with the Chartered Industries of Singapore. It was set up in 1967 to produce ammunition and weapons for the Singapore Armed Forces.

Chartered Industries gave out several scholarships for study at NTI. After graduation, scholars such as Michael Chua Lee Huat returned to serve their bond. “As a young engineer, I handled the design and development of a photocopier binding machine for Xerox Corporation,” recalled Michael Chua. Today, he manages defence-related projects. Classmate Eng Tian Soon was a colleague that oversaw the manufacture of equipment. He had a staff of 30 people comprising shift supervisors, technicians and inspectors under him.

Chartered Industries has a subsidiary — Chartered Electronics Industries. The latter produce electronic fuses, military communications equipment and small arms training simulators. Chan Yew Meng did research and development for military hardware. His colleague, Chee Choong Yang, went to Germany for training and transferred the technology back to Singapore.

In 2000, Chartered Industries merged with ST Automotive to form ST Kinetics, a subsidiary of ST Engineering under the Singapore Technologies Group, a government-linked company.

Sudheer Prabhakaran is now in Bangalore, India to set up the ST Kinetics plant to manufacture construction equipment, maintenance equipment, excavators and dump trucks. He said, “I still have the pioneering spirit. I could not resist the chance to build a team to meet the needs of the growing Indian market.” Sudheer was previously the General Manager of Singapore Test Services, a ST Kinetics subsidiary. He spent 16 years with this subsidiary that provides independent testing, inspection and certification services to the industry.

Other ST Engineering subsidiaries include ST Aerospace, ST Marine and ST Electronics. ST Engineering is one of the largest firms on the Singapore Exchange. It is one of Asia's largest defence and engineering groups. It specialises in solutions and services for the aerospace, electronics and marine sectors.

ST Electronics focuses on satellite communications, interactive digital media and e-government solutions.

IN RECENT YEARS, LOCAL ENGINEERING courses have lost ground to courses such as business, law and medicine. Boon Hwee singled out two reasons for the decline. He pointed out that an engineering education is hard work. As society progresses, people can take softer choices. Three decades ago, engineering education was a pathway out of poverty for many. That is true of China and India today. They produce large numbers of engineers because it is the way to a better life. Engineers with an entrepreneurial bent tend to start their own companies. The shift from engineering and technology to the softer disciplines such as finance seems inevitable in all developed countries such as the United States and Europe.

Secondly, the structure of the world is such that the financial sector pays much better than engineering jobs. Boon Hwee said, “We may be sceptical of the value-add but young people are not stupid. For those who want to go where the money is, that is an easy and lucrative way.”

He is convinced that an engineering education holds great value for the future. “Engineering is the best undergraduate degree to pursue because the entire field is open to you at the graduate level,” said Boon Hwee. In the United States, people with an engineering degree go on to do medicine. They produce some of the most innovative medical devices that use a combination of engineering and medicine. It is also not surprising that some top bankers are engineers. Boon Hwee did his masters in business administration at Harvard Business School. He did a stint as the finance director in Hewlett-Packard Singapore prior to becoming managing director.

Boon Hwee added, “Engineers by definition have to understand mathematics. Finance is mostly mathematical models nowadays. By way of preserving one's options for the future, few undergraduate courses can match engineering.”

The declining interest in engineering, if left unchecked, does not augur well for Singapore's future. “Singapore is a major foreign exchange centre in the world,” he explained. “We trade financial services, financial products and commodities products. We do import and export.

SINCE GRADUATION IN 1985 Francis Tay Teck Leong never left campus and he is not in academia. He returned to NTI to join GINTIC as a communication engineer. The company deals with computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). GINTIC is now known as the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology. His most memorable moment at work was dealing with the Nimda virus on 18 September 2001. The virus hogged bandwidth, destabilised gateway routers and was spreading like wildfire. If not stopped, it could paralyse the GINTIC corporate network. Francis swung into action. He mobilised his staff and cut off network access to any infected computer. They contained the virus and prevented any network disruption. Francis recalled, “It was a crisis that demanded my problem solving skills that were learnt at NTI. My background in electrical and electronics engineering helps my IT work. Both deal with hardware and software.” He rose through the ranks to become deputy director. In 2009, Francis received a National Day Long Service Award from Minister of Trade and Industry, Lim Hng Kiang.

Another IT veteran is Ho Lip Tse. He started out as a systems analyst with the Telecommunications Authority of Singapore. The Singapore-born Australian citizen based in Melbourne is a solution support architect with SAP Australia. SAP is the world leader in enterprise applications software that helps companies run better. Lip Tse provides risk mitigation consulting services for complex projects. His strong interest in this field prompted him to do his PhD at the University of South Australia. Prior to SAP, the mechanical engineer by training was working for Motorola Singapore where he was responsible for equipment maintenance, process engineering, shop floor integration and IT. He became a certified SAP consultant at Motorola. That enabled him to join SAP in 1999.

Liau Hon Chung's IT expertise enabled the smooth running of banking transactions. The importance of his work came through in one incident. At the back end, someone missed a semi-colon in the command, causing two commands to be combined. That destroyed the root file system causing the critical server to crash, and the bank's opening was only eight hours away.

Our experiences in Aceh lead us to believe that a surprising amount of the reconstruction and development agenda has failed to address the cultural and historical dimensions of social recovery. In spite of all the meetings, coordinating sessions and public statements about interagency cooperation, it is impossible to find a commonly-accepted definition of what ‘recovery’ entails or should look like. It is difficult to imagine such resources could be allocated and spent without a clearly-defined end-game, but unfortunately this is an endemic problem in many post-disaster situations (Bennett et al. 2006; Telford and Cosgrave 2006). The evidence from Aceh suggests that this is specially a concern when there are large numbers of external organizations involved in aid and reconstruction processes.

Naomi Klein's influential book The Shock Doctrine draws attention to the cynical and opportunistic behaviour often accompanying post-conflict and post-disaster reconstruction processes. She builds a powerful argument that government and corporate interests exploit the aftermath of large-scale social trauma for political and/or economic gain, and in some cases initiate or encourage trauma (Klein 2007). While there are certainly cases where relief and development aid is manipulated to achieve political, economic or social goals, we want to argue in this chapter that practices which target social transformation that fall outside pre-existing social and cultural contexts can impede the recovery of traumatized communities, even when it is brought about through the interventions of well-meaning individuals and organizations. Our research focuses upon cultural and social mechanisms for community recovery, and how these are related with the material world. We argue that there are aspects of post-disaster recovery that are contingent upon reconnecting with familiar cultural and social practices, which in turn are intimately connected with the built environment. Aid and reconstruction efforts that further remove people from familiar physical and social contexts run the risk of pulling them away from the basic community infrastructure that is necessary for recovery.

A GOOD START, BUT WHAT ABOUT DEVELOPMENT?

The tsunami had an immense impact on development processes, conflicts, patterns of risk and poverty in affected areas, as did the subsequent relief and reconstruction efforts. This chapter looks at how affected populations in Aceh have coped with the disaster from a social protection perspective. It considers how they have continued to manage their own welfare both with and without aid. Specifically, it focuses upon issues of poverty alleviation, equity, and the linking of relief, reconstruction and development (LRRD) in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. As part of this exploration, questions are asked about whether the reconstruction and development efforts have buttressed or compromised the social protection mechanisms that people already had in place at the family and community levels prior to the disaster.

Conceptually, “social protection” comes from the European welfare state design that recognizes three pillars of welfare: private, government and market. Resources move among these three pillars in accordance with the welfare needs of individuals and families. Such a design recognizes and responds to changing levels of societal development and consequences that create risks. In the case of Aceh and the rest of Indonesia, social protection needs to factor in the many unpredictable man-made and natural disasters faced, as part of efforts to better link these pillars.

There is a growing realization that, from the perspective of the economically disadvantaged, shocks are not abnormal. Disasters and hazards, large and small, are an ever-present threat that profoundly affects livelihood strategies. In recognition of this, social protection has become a central issue in the development debate in many countries, even though the term means different things to different people. Social protection may encompass social assistance schemes, social security, social funds, cash transfers and other structures that provide a safety net for those at risk of becoming destitute, or a safety net to provide subsidized support for those struggling to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of trauma.

INTRODUCTION

Few would dispute the potential for natural disasters and armed conflicts to have a disproportionate impact on women, especially in the developing world. Women who are primary caregivers, with greater responsibility for household work, have less time and capacity to mobilize resources for recovery. They are less likely to participate in the public sphere in which humanitarian relief is organized and delivered. They may be overlooked if relief efforts target programmes at household heads, or focus on primary employment as the sole source of livelihoods. And if these relief efforts also fail to collect gender-disaggregated data, the disproportionate impacts on women may not even register in monitoring mechanisms.

Population displacement induced by disaster or conflict can remove women from kinship structures that provide basic forms of social insurance against poverty and violence. Displacement also removes women from location-specific income, including access to common property resources. After displacement, women who return home are at risk from relatives or neighbours who take advantage of social turmoil and government weakness to deny their claims to land. In some cases, returning women will lose access to land because prevailing social or legal norms mediate their entitlement to land through a deceased or missing husband or relative. This is particularly the case for women who are widows, or who stand to inherit land from a deceased relative.

While these gendered risks of dispossession after conflict or disaster are real enough, the appropriate form and focus of any response is not so clear-cut. For humanitarian actors such as UN agencies and international NGOs, the orthodox prescription is to “mainstream” gender into rights-based programming. For example, a 1998 resolution of the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities notes the impact of land-related discrimination on women who are internally displaced.

AN EXCEPTIONALLY RICH FOREST HERITAGE

Recollections from the Seventeenth Century

Forests and forest products have played a central role in Aceh's history; Aceh's very name, according to Denys Lombard (referring to William Marsden), may even be attributable to a plant. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, when Aceh was ruled by Sultan Iskandar Muda and had reached its apex as a regional power, its forest resources played an important economic role. According to Lombard, who quotes the Hikayat Atjéh, the kingdom's prosperity was at least partially linked to its control over resources of the forested interior, among them jungle animals and numerous plants and wood products. Exports of these products continued well after the reign of Iskandar Muda. They included elephants — those same elephants that had played such a crucial role in insuring Aceh's military and even naval power — as well as horses and an apparently even greater number of forest products than before.

Ever since those glorious days in Acehnese history, as settlements and agriculture gradually occupied much of the coastal lowlands, with some expansion even into the interior, Aceh has remained predominantly forested, more so than the rest of Sumatra, at least until very recently.

The Leuser Ecosystem

Mainland Aceh covers some 55,400 km2 (Figure 8.1). The core of that territory, nearly 80 per cent of it, stands over 100 metres above sea level and is characterized by “splayed out ranges and valleys”. That mountainous terrain is predominantly the domain of the forest, a forest that constitutes a treasure trove of biodiversity. In fact, well over half of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam is occupied by two exceptionally rich and largely mountainous forest domains: the Ulu Masen and Leuser ecosystems (Figure 8.2). The former, which extends over some 7,000 km2, lies entirely within Aceh. Covering nearly 26,000 km2, the much larger Leuser Ecosystem overlaps into the province of North Sumatra, which holds approximately one-eighth of it.