City Council pulls plug on polluting laundry plants
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The City Council is urging authorities to close down dozens of garment processing plants that launder jeans in the Sukabumi Selatan subdistrict of West Jakarta, due to the pollution they cause to nearby rivers and streams.
Mukhayar, the City Council's vice chairman for Commission D on development issues, said that most of the 50 or so laundry plants in the area held home industry licenses.
Residents in the vicinity have protested against the plants for allegedly dumping their toxic wastes directly into nearby waterways.
"The best solution to this problem is to return the area to its original function and close down businesses that do not have permits," Mukhayar told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The Sukabumi Selatan sub-district, including the site where the laundry plants are located, has been designated as a residential area.
"We will be taking action soon to close down the unlicensed laundries. And if necessary, we will process these matters as criminal cases," Mukhayar threatened.
"If they (the laundries) do not cooperate, then the next step will be to call in related institutions and clear them out of there. Repressive action has to be taken to prevent the impact of pollution, such as happened in Buyat, from happening in Jakarta," he said.
Head of Sukabumi Selatan subdistrict Taufik Chandra said that some home industry garment producers had purchased adjacent lots over the years, constructed workshops and installed large machines.
"Usually the owners have between 5 and 8 laundry machines," said Taufik, adding that none of the owners have permits.
Workers, however, are worried about their jobs if authorities decide to close down the plants.
"There are more than 50 laundry plants in this area. If they close these businesses, where will we work?" asked Hendra, 21, an employee of Haji Bakri's garment processing plant in Community Unit 4. "Up to five thousand people could lose their jobs."
He explained that each laundry worker earned between Rp 20,000 and Rp 50,000 per day, depending on the size of consignments sent in by garment factories.
Natri, 17, said she may as well go back to her village in Central Java if the plants were closed down.
The garment processing plants use a number of harsh chemicals to cause jeans to fade in order to satisfy the fashion dictates of the market.
Waste from these jeans laundries contains a cocktail of different chemicals that include fabric dyes, which are extremely toxic to the environment and which have been classified as "dangerous and deadly" by the head of the West Jakarta Industry and Trade Agency, Purnomo.
Presently, the Pesangrahan River and the Sekretaris River along with a number of drainage channels have become badly polluted by waste dumped directly into them from the laundries.