City officers told to be on 24-hour flood alert

Ahmad Junaidi and Muniggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The City Public Works Agency ordered its officers on Tuesday, especially those responsible for monitoring water sluices, to stay on alert around the clock in anticipation of possible flooding, while the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency warned that floods might hit the city at any time due to the ineffective drainage system.

"I ordered them to be on standby around the clock as floods could occur suddenly," agency head IGK Suena said.

He also said that he would coordinate with the City Sanitation Agency to remove mountains of garbage in rivers, such as in Manggarai, which cause severe flooding.

Suena said that the city could become flooded easily because it is located in a lowland.

"Even if it does not rain, runoff from Bogor often flooded Jakarta as the city is located in a lowland," Suena said.

Separately, Meteorology and Geophysics Agency spokesman Waan Tamrin explained that the rainfall had not reached its maximum level.

"This month is still considered to be in the transition from the dry season to rainy season," he said.

The rainfall would start to increase in December and continue to its height in January or February next year, he said.

Waan said that the city's poor drainage system would result in floods, which had already hit several areas here despite the rainfall still being considered as normal.

"It's not the rainfall that causes the floods, they can be caused by ineffective drainage here," he asserted, adding that many rivers and drains here are used by people to dump waste.

Some city streets are still inundated by water several hours after it has stopped raining, causing heavy traffic jams, as happened on Monday.

According to the public works agency's data, the city has 80 areas which are prone to flooding. In Central Jakarta, there are nine flood-prone areas, in North Jakarta 23, West Jakarta 17, South Jakarta 19 and East Jakarta 12.

Jakarta has 156 water sluices and 139 water pumps to avert flooding.

Separately, councillor Bimo Hastoro said some 3,000 cubic meters of garbage, out of the city's daily total of 25,000 cubic meters, could not be transported by the sanitation agency to Bantar Gebang garbage dump.

He said that most of the 3,000 cubic meters of trash clogged the city's rivers because the sanitation agency had no funds to deal with garbage in the rivers, while the public works agency claim that is not their responsibility.

"It's an old problem. The problem is caused by poor public discipline, by people who dump their trash in the rivers," Bimo said.

Meanwhile, the water source management and flood control agency transports some 37 trucks full of waste removed from the Ciliwung river here every day, technical operations officer Joko Waluyo said.

According to Joko, since September the rainfall had not increased dramatically, though there was an "insignificant increase over the last couple of days".