City plans to burn its garbage
Damar Harsanto and Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The city administration plans to eventually incinerate all garbage, an official says.
"Incinerators have been installed in cities worldwide such as Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai. We will just copy them and therefore will need a shorter period of time to install them," City Secretary Ritola Tasmaya told The Jakarta Post at City Hall on Monday.
He added that experts from the Japanese-based Mitsubishi company, which will supply the incinerators, would stay in Indonesia for up to three years to ensure that the facilities run smoothly in their initial operation.
"In Singapore, experts from the company also trained locals to operate and maintain the incinerators as part of the transfer of technology," he said.
The one-year time frame he mentioned for the first incinerator to be in full use differs from a claim by a waste expert of the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), Sri Bebassari. She has warned the administration to be careful in adopting the incinerator method because a feasibility study would take around three years.
The administration plans to allocate Rp 400 billion (US$44.20 million) from its 2005 city budget to procure a large incinerator worth Rp 1.2 trillion.
Using incinerators is expected to solve the city's prolonged garbage problem due to the uncertainty in the operation of Bantar Gebang dump in Bekasi, which accommodates the capital's 6,000 tons of daily waste, and the halted implementation of Bojong dump in Bogor, due to strong opposition from locals.
Jakarta plans to buy four incinerators, each with a capacity of 2,000 tons of daily waste, by 2007.
Ritola said large incinerators, which burned waste at 5,000 Celsius degrees, would be environmentally friendly. "They will be completely different from the smaller ones we purchased before."
He said Jakarta could not rely on neighboring cities to accept its waste for disposal. "Jakarta should solve its own waste problem because other cities can no longer support the capital as its buffer zones."
The City Sanitation Agency is preparing locations in Duri Kosambi and Rawa Buaya, West Jakarta, and Marunda, North Jakarta, to put the incinerators.