City unprepared for imminent floods

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With the coming of the rainy season, huge amounts of garbage are still clogging many parts of major rivers in the city. Meanwhile, many roads have been inundated, indicating inadequate drainage.

Despite this, city officials claimed on Tuesday that they had done their best to anticipate this rainy season, which according to the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency may be marked by particularly heavy rainfalls.

"We held a meeting of relevant agencies days before the Idul Fitri break. All the agencies expressed their readiness in anticipating the floods," said head of the warnings division at the City Public Order Agency, Didiet Soehandono.

The agency is the head of the Coordination Board for City Disaster Mitigation, which is also in charge of controlling annual floods.

According to Didiet, the large amounts of garbage in several rivers, which had not yet been removed, was the responsibility of the City Public Works Agency who are charged with guaranteeing the smooth flow of water from upstream areas.

Meanwhile, the head of water resources division at the Public Works Agency, I Nyoman Laba, said that his office could not remove all the garbage in the rivers due to limited funds allocated for such activities.

Jakarta has 13 major rivers.

He said that the Rp 18 billion allocated for cleaning was inadequate. His office needed some Rp 40 billion to remove all garbage from the rivers.

Meanwhile, deputy chairman of the City Council's Commission D on development affairs, Muhayar, said the Public Works Agency had not worked optimally because up to October, it could only spend 56 percent of the Rp 400 billion (US$44.44 million) allocated for the improvement of flood control facilities.

"The Public Works Agency should have completed all projects relating to flood control in October," he said.

He urged the agency to complete all the projects by the end of December, as it is estimated that the rainy season will peak in January.

Projects relating to flood control include river dredging, maintenance of small drainage systems in residential areas and along roads, garbage removal from rivers, and water pump maintenance.