Dirty price to pay for 'clean' government call

JAKARTA (JP): For five extraordinary days, the House of Representatives was home to a vociferous mass of students and other antigovernment supporters packing its compound.

But the 30-year-old building also played unwilling host to the mountain of garbage accumulated during their sit-in.

Empty meal boxes, food and biscuit wrappers, plastic bags, mineral water containers and bottles, straws, cigarette butts and dirty tissues lay strewn along the floors, corridors, parking lots and compound after they departed Friday night.

The 8,500-square-meter House -- usually noted for squeaky- clean floors, spotless walls and a manicured compound -- had been turned upside down and inside out.

Dried mud from shoes blazed a trail across its carpets.

The 60-hectare complex, which is also home to a new office for the House, more resembled a litter-filled traditional market in the suburbs than the hallowed gathering place for the country's representatives and ministers.

Cleaner Nurudin said he had spent days trying to make headway in sweeping the mounds of junk smothering the building and grounds located on one of the city's main thoroughfares of Jl. Gatot Subroto.

"I told them not to litter the floor, then they moved to another room. But they littered there, too," he told The Jakarta Post as he continued to sweep.

He also said people had broken into the restrooms of the Paripurna room, which is reserved for preliminary meetings, and stolen items including the bidet taps.

"I don't know whether they were students or not, because I didn't see them with my own eyes. But the door was broken and the items were missing," he said.

On the first few days, the temporary occupants of the House seemed oblivious to the filth surrounding them.

"There are too many people here, and although there are garbage cans available around the compound, the people are accustomed to throwing garbage anywhere they want," said E. Avriadi of the Jakarta Economics Academy.

Seeing the lack of concern for hygiene of some of their peers, Avriadi and others decided to set up a voluntary garbage collection system.

"We realized that (the garbage problem) and did our best to help the House's cleaning staff," he said.

Dozens of students volunteered to sweep the grounds and comb the compound. They put the refuse into plastic garbage bags and pooled them at several corners for collection by trucks from the City's Cleaning Agency.

Avriadi said the agency supplied them with dozens of brooms and hundreds of garbage bags.

Endang Suparna of the agency said three garbage trucks were prepared for the collection.

He said the House's sanitation department seemed overwhelmed by the extent of the problem on their hands.

"Maybe the staff had already given up," he said.

Endang hailed the students' decision to help with the cleanup but asked them to keep on demanding reforms, including demanding a "clean" government.

"To clean this country is more difficult than to clean this building," agreed a student of Azzahra University who was sweeping with her colleagues in the front yard of the building.

Economics student Uki Sukmawati said the voluntary cleanup was a spontaneous act of the students.

"It's better than doing nothing," she said. "I get tired if I just sit and listen to the speeches all day, I need to do something."

Most of the students involved expressed the same opinion.

"It's an activity that I've rarely done for years," Rani of Trisakti University said. The Riau native said she lived in a boardinghouse in Jakarta.

Garbage begets more garbage: other students, journalists and bystanders kept the trash mountain from subsiding as they carelessly disposed garbage wherever they wanted.

Students on cleanup duty admitted they swept the same spots over and over again.

"It looks like a never-ending activity as plastic containers and remnants of food keep appearing after we sweep them away," was the exasperated comment of one of them.

It all peaked last Thursday when president Soeharto announced his resignation. The House's gates were opened for people to enter and join the raucous celebrations inside.

Families picnicked in the grounds and spent the day soaking in the jubilant atmosphere. For Nurudin and his colleagues, watching from the sidelines, it was a foreshadowing of the dirty job which lay ahead. (ivy/emf)