With containers of tsunami aid gathering dust at ports in Jakarta and Belawan, North Sumatra, the government is relying on oft-heard excuses to explain the delay in clearance.

Officials point to bureaucratic requirements and the logistical issues involved in delivering aid to survivors of the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam.

Solutions to fast-track the goods seem in short supply.

"It's not as simple as we think," said Andi Hanindito, who heads the natural disaster emergency directorate at the Ministry of Social Affairs.

While the Ministry of Social Affairs is in charge of issuing recommendations for aid clearance, permission must also be sought from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Customs and Excise Office, before the National Disaster Management Coordination Body (Bakornas) can give approval.

"There are goods that have to be approved by the Ministry of Trade first, and then must be crosschecked at the port, before the minister signs it (clearance). The procedure is indeed long," Andi told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Sampoerna Foundation, a nonprofit institution primarily focused on disbursing educational scholarships nationwide, says it waited nine months for the bureaucratic paperwork to clear for a container of tsunami relief supplies at Tanjung Priok Port, North Jakarta.

By the time the approval was given last November, the storage fee had ballooned to Rp 65 million (US$6,914) and the aid -- mostly clothes, blankets and mattresses -- was no longer needed.

An estimated 217 containers of aid, including ambulances, are stuck at Tanjung Priok, with some held up by the recipient's inability to pay high storage fees or inadequate documentation.

In Medan, 232 containers of supplies and 58 vehicles from donors in New Zealand, Japan, Thailand, Switzerland, Britain and Singapore are also languishing at Belawan Port.

The Ministry of Finance's director general of customs and excise, Eddy Abdurrahman said that every container of tsunami aid entering through Indonesian ports must have a recommendation letter from the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias.

"As soon as the Customs and Excise Office receives the letter, we issue a letter for the release of the goods," Eddy said.

His office would then file a request with the finance ministry to waive import duties.

"If there were goods that could not be cleared from the ports and were charged, then they mustn't have been for Aceh," he said, denying reports about the containers held up at Belawan port due to the maze of bureaucracy.

Andi said the long process involved in claiming goods was not a deliberate hindrance, but meant to ensure there was accountability for their release and to prevent smuggling.

"We recently had a problem with that (smuggling). After we approved several containers filled with vehicles, it turned out there was limousine in it."

He also noted a lack of documentation or incomplete addresses of recipients for many of the goods.

"The Red Cross recently came to claim tsunami aid, but they have inadequate documentation about which containers to claim. Also, we had the Indonesian Navy ask about the fee for containers sent to us as the recipient, whereas we never received notification regarding the aid.".