Like a half million others in Indonesia's Aceh province who were left homeless when last year's tsunami swallowed their houses and inundated their land, the 25-year-old Rosman has yet to move into a new permanent dwelling.

Despite a rush of promises, at least 65,000 people in Aceh are still camped out in tents, and at least 50,000 others live in temporary living centres. Reconstruction is slower here than in Sri Lanka and southern India, the two other areas worst affected by the tragedy, but even there many tens of thousands await new homes.

International aid agency Oxfam estimated in a report released this week that by the disaster's anniversary, around one-fifth of the 1.8 million people made homeless by the tsunami will be in permanent homes, including people who have decided to stay with relatives rather than move into a new home.

For all the billions of dollars in aid received, rebuilding has been painfully slow in Aceh. Some of those displaced say they have no idea when or where they will get new homes.

"Nobody has come and spoken to us about that," says Rosman of his family's land in the Ulee Lheue district of Aceh's capital, part of the 15 percent of land here now under water at least some of the time.

"The government is not clear. They talk, they promise, but it's not realised," says Rosman, who initially lived in a camp until he lost patience and moved in with a relative.

Many Acehnese are fuming that the government and a slew of non-government organisations (NGOs) have failed to deliver on promises of new homes made in the wake of the tsunami.

So far, about 16,500 houses have been completed -- mostly by smaller NGOs with no bureaucracy to wade through -- and just under that number again should be finished by year-end, head of the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR), Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, said recently.

The cabinet-level agency was created in April and is tasked with rebuilding the province. The target is up to 120,000 homes in the next two years, with 40,000 to be supplied by the BRR itself.

"We are trying to fill in the gap -- if donors and NGOs don't deliver their promises, then we just step in ... People are already angry. This is why we have to fill in the gap," says a deputy BRR director, Eddy Purwanto.

He says infrastructure rebuilding is also crucial and the blueprint for Aceh's future is breathtakingly comprehensive. Reconstruction of two ports is underway and three more are planned, along with a network of airstrips, new roads, bridges, a power plant and repaired irrigation and drainage systems.

The time frame is two years. The price tag is seven billion dollars.

Charlie Higgins, the emergency coordinator for the UN's World Food Program in Banda Aceh, concedes that the initial idea that everyone could be in permanent homes by the end of the year was "probably a little over optimistic".

"And there should have been more concentration on the temporary solution -- but a better solution than just plastic sheeting or tents."

Progress has been quicker in Sri Lanka, where just over 100,000 homes were either destroyed or damaged and about a million people initially displaced along much of the island's coastline.

More than 53,000 "transitional accommodation units" have been erected, according to the country's main tsunami aid co-ordinating unit, TAFREN.

From small wooden huts with iron roofs to larger two-room shelters with palm frond roofs, the new places tsunami survivors are calling home vary in size, quality and comfort.

Only a few people, if any at all, are still living in tents, according to David Glendinning, associate liaison officer of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), based in Kilinochichi, the base of Tamil Tiger separatist guerrillas.

Glendinning says they are moving onto phase three of reconstruction -- building brand new villages -- which will take about three years.

In India's worst-hit district of Nagapattinam in southern Tamil Nadu, just 10 permanent homes have been handed over so far, according to Ranvir Prasad, the top bureaucrat in charge of relief and rehabilitation.

Some 11,000 temporary shelters have been put up across the district, which will eventually give way to more than 17,000 permanent homes.

Neeraj Mittal, Joint Commissioner of Tamil Nadu government, said 85,000 homes need to be rebuilt in the state, but predicts they will be ready by March next year as construction is underway in most regions.

The overall reconstruction, excluding the cost of land, will cost more than 35 billion rupees (755 million dollars) including infrastructure, Annie George, chief of the NGO Coordination Centre, tells AFP.

According to George, more than 50,000 survivors are still housed in temporary tin-roof shelters in Nagapattinam, but some have moved back into their patched-up old homes.

G. Radha, a 44-year-old fisherwoman, is fed-up of waiting for a permanent shelter, so she is renovating her home. Wearing a green sari, she sits on the doorstep hoping that her husband can earn enough to complete the job.

"We live in temporary shelters and ... are trying to rebuild this house. "It requires a lot more work and the government has given up on us," Radha says.

"The government has promised us permanent shelters. But only God knows when it will be ready," she says.

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