WE NEED A TRACTOR AND FURNITURE, SAYS RETURNEE TO DANUBE REGION

DANUBE REGION $ ILOK, Sept 7 (Hina) - Jan Zajac is one of the few displaced persons who have returned to Ilok after almost six years. He returned to his undamaged and empty, yet plundered, house with his wife on 20 August with a certificate of return from the Croatian government Office for Refugees and Displaced Persons. "We are not afraid, nobody is attacking us, but we need help. We are farmers, and all our machinery has been looted, so we have nothing to till the land with. We need a tractor, as well as furniture to equip the house with necessities - to have somewhere to live and something to live off," Zajac says. The Zajac family was forced to leave their home on 17 October 1991 together with the rest of Ilok's non-Serb population, leaving the town in a procession known as the "Ilok Convoy". They lived in a refugee settlement Mala Gorica, not far from Sisak, where some members of his family still live. Jan and his wife, still in the prime of life, returned recently to start from scratch. "It is not easy. We have no electricity or water. There is no furniture, beds, sockets have been torn out, several doors are missing, as are sections of the floor. We sleep on makeshift beds..," Zajac says. "We have begun some repairs, but people tell us to wait, not to reconstruct until the damage has been assessed, some say we will get everything from the government. That would be good, but damage assessment is somewhat slow…," he comments. The registration of houses and damage in Ilok has been completed recently, so the Zajacs' home will soon be included into the Development and Reconstruction Ministry's project of speedy reconstruction of houses belonging to lower damage categories. A local government official in charge of displaced persons, Vinko Bakula, recalled that the Ilok leadership had sent the Development and Reconstruction Ministry a list of houses of returnees which had to be equipped with essential furniture as soon as possible, so the returnees could be ensured normal living conditions. Essential furniture and other basic household items should arrive at the Zajacs' home any day now. However, work and making a living is a problem for the returnees. "We own three hectares of land, but we cannot cultivate it because our tractor and all of its attachments have been stolen. The Serb who lived in our house had left before we returned, so we don't know who took our machinery and where. I looked over the fields, some have been tilled, but some are choked with weeds two metres high. We also had a vineyard, it could be salvaged..," Zajac says. The Mayor of Ilok, Stipan Kraljevic, confirmed that returnees, as well as agricultural corporations, lacked machinery, which had been stolen and most probably taken to Serbia. There was an idea, Kraljevic said, that the recently reintegrated food production companies Vupik of Vukovar and Agrokomerc of Ilok should organise sowing on all Ilok's fields this autumn, regardless of who they belonged to, so that about 60% of Ilok's land would not stay uncultivated, as has been the case for the past five years. Farmers would thus have a harvest next year, despite the difficult to solve problem of missing mechanisation. The same idea was presented by Croatian Development and Reconstruction Minister Jure Radic after a meeting between President Tudjman and UN Transitional Administrator William Walker. Returnees and officials, who until recently had also been in exile, hailed the idea, but warned that the necessary help to returnees should arrive more quickly. Jan Zajac is of the same opinion, "We don't doubt that we will receive furniture and machinery, but we need all that now. We have been living in an empty house and without work for over ten days, and the land remains uncultivated…" (hina) lm vm 070951 MET sep 97