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Padang. Jasri and five other men in the neighborhood hammer nails into planks of wood. Surrounding them for kilometers are piles of crushed brick and splintered timber, remnants of the devastating earthquake that hit West Sumatra two months ago.

Very few in Banuaran, a neighborhood in Padang city’s south, have somewhere to sleep that will protect them from the rain that is now pouring down every day with the change of season. Most families are still living in what’s left of their homes, not knowing when the structures might finally give way. Others are living under tarpaulins, but even they are hard to find here.

Although no one here has appropriate shelter, these busy men are not building a family home. They are putting up this structure for local NGO SurfAid so that its volunteers can keep coming three days a week to monitor the psychosocial state of their kids, many of whom are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

SurfAid is the only outside aid to have reached Banuaran, and with little funding, it cannot offer anything to help with shelter. Most NGOs are in rural areas, mostly in the districts of Padang Pariaman and Agam, north of the city.

Immediately after the 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck on Sept. 30, NGOs and the media swarmed the city, where multi-story buildings had come crashing down, burying victims for days.

“The initial focus was very urban, with search and rescue efforts. It took a week for everyone to realize the problems were in the rural areas,” said Charlie Mason, deputy head of Save the Children.

Now in the recovery phase, few NGOs have turned their attention back to the city.

“We have very little information to see how people are coping in the city,” said shelter cluster coordinator, Graham Eastmond of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies.

“Very few NGOs have the capacity to address issues in the city, which is one of the reasons they all ran out to Pariaman.

“The technology involved in repairing houses in the city and the advice they need are different. It’s more complex and you need a much more technical team with more flexible solutions,” he said.

D Nuzul Putra, head of public relations of the West Sumatra government, pointed the finger at Padang Mayor Fauzi Bahar for the lack of aid in the city.

“The NGOs left Padang because the mayor said he would look after his own people,” he said.

Head of the Padang Disaster Management Agency, Dedi Henidal, confirmed that the local government had said it would handle the distribution of aid itself, but added that the problem was a shortage of aid.

“If the supplies come today, they will reach the people on the same day,” he said.

“There is no shelter aid in the city at all. We desperately need it. There are 33,597 severely damaged houses, all of which are uninhabitable,” he said.

The central government has said it would give permanent housing cash grants to victims who have lost their shelters. That will not happen until after the budget revision next year.

“That assistance will happen in May 2010 at the earliest,” Dedi said.

In Pariaman, tens of thousands of homes have been posted with pink signs to mark that they are severely damaged. But there are no pink signs in Banuaran, although most of them look like they warrant one.

“The reason there are no signs in that neighborhood is because the team responsible for that believed putting them up there would cause issues within the community,” said Nuzul, of the West Sumatra government.

“The team finished that job 30 days after the earthquake and it covered urban areas,” he said.

But the people of Banuaran say they have not seen anyone from the government set foot in their neighborhood since the quake.

“We saw on TV that we were going to get 5,000 rupiah (50 cents) a day each, but we never got the money,” says Oti Mina, 42, walking along the dirt road with her daughter Marlina.

“We’re living in the kitchen of our damaged house. We haven’t received any aid yet, except for a little food from NGOs. The day after the quake, we got a packet of noodles to share between five,” she says.

“I can see the people on the other side of the tracks are getting some help. Please come and help us, too,” she says.

The homes in Banuaran are as badly damaged as those in Pariaman. There is not a house in sight that looks intact. The 249 residents have complained to Jasri, their neighborhood head, who has complained to the district head. Both leaders have appealed for aid, to no avail.

Jasri is organized in his aid appeal — he has printed a 50-page book of photos of each destroyed home in his area. He also has a list of names and addresses of every family head whose house was destroyed. All this has been passed on to the government, but no one has come to help.

As the Banuaran people wait for the government and NGOs to help them, they are taking matters into their own hands. “We’ve started rebuilding ourselves. We can’t wait for the government, although we do really need their help,” Jasri says.

Without assistance, it is unlikely that any of the rebuilt dwellings will be earthquake resistant, and seismologists predict an even stronger earthquake is likely to hit the region, possibly within the next decade.

There is one wooden hut in the neighborhood that looks sturdy. It belongs to Tisna Danil, a 43-year-old mother of two. She and her family live in the six-by-four-meter space with a tarpaulin roof.

She hopes her family can survive in the shelter until the government cash grant becomes available, although she is skeptical the grant will be sufficient. Her message is clear: she doesn’t trust the government and she wants the NGOs to come back to the city. “The government takes too long, and if help does come from Jakarta, there will be nothing left by the time it gets here. Please, please, don’t send aid through the government.”