Councillors slam agency over garbage handling

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Councillors slammed the city sanitary agency on Wednesday for its lack of seriousness in using incinerators to handle garbage.

Chairman of the City Council's Commission D for development affairs, Sayogo Hendrosubroto, said the City Council, and in particular Commission D, was disappointed with the sanitary agency, which could not meet the demand made by legislators to immediately operate all of the 10 newly bought incinerators.

Recently, the agency used money from the 2001 city budget to buy 10 new incinerators at a cost of Rp 3.2 billion (US$372,000).

The agency now has 15 incinerators. It had previously bought five incinerators but they were not operating efficiently enough to tackle the garbage problem.

The project was officiated in December last year, but it remained fictive until reported on by many newspapers in May 2002.

Early this month, head of the sanitary agency Slamet Limbong said that all 10 incinerators would begin operating on June 14. But Limbong told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that four of the 10 incinerators still had no power supply.

The Post observed on Wednesday that an incinerator in Petamburan subdistrict, Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta was not working. "Although it was inspected by legislators last Thursday, the incinerator has not yet been used," said Tarsa, a garbage man in Petamburan.

The 10 new incinerators have also been carelessly chosen because they are not efficient and not environmentally friendly.

All of them can only heat up to a temperature of 800 degrees Celsius, which is lower than the ideal 1200 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which garbage is most efficiently burned, producing the least pollution.

"At only 800 degrees Celsius, the incinerators are not able to burn plastic garbage efficiently, which emits high levels of dioxin gas that can cause cancer among people living nearby," he added.

Their capacity to burn is only one cubic meter per hour, which is also slower than the expected three cubic meters per hour.

Garbage became a serious problem in the city when the Bekasi mayoralty administration closed Bantar Gebang dump site late last year following the failure of Jakarta's sanitary agency to implement a proper sanitary landfill system.

Bantar Gebang was reopened after President Megawati Soekarnoputri intervened.

Another Commission D member Muhayar RM. also expressed his disappointment, saying the failure of the sanitary agency to deal with the project showed its reluctance to use technology to resolve the city's waste problem.

"This should be seriously investigated by the City Audit Agency," said Muhayar, adding the purchase of incinerators was part of the city's efforts to comprehensively resolve the waste problem.

"Our bad experience with Bekasi should have encouraged the city to seriously seek an alternative system of waste management in the city," Muhayar said.

The council will encourage the city administration to add incinerators every year, he said, adding that this year the city is expected to purchase 25 incinerators worth Rp 8 billion.

"But it seems the sanitary agency is reluctant to make the incinerator project a success," Sayogo said.