Flooding

Flooding

With more sunny days, most Jakartans seem to have forgotten the huge floods in January and February.

There is now a strong drive by the government to restore Jakarta's outskirts -- the mountains stretching from Cianjur over Puncak down to Bogor -- which in the past two decades has been converted into housing and recreation facilities, thus sizably reducing its role as a water catchment.

Unfortunately there seems to be no such drive from the responsible ministries to properly manage the drains in the capital city itself. I think Jakarta's drainage network is in critical condition and I would ascribe the floods mainly to their condition, not to what is happening in Puncak -- although the balding hills are of great concern to anyone who remembers the lush vegetation of some decades ago.

When Jakarta had only 500,000 inhabitants earlier in this century, the Ciliwung river already had its two check points. One at Manggarai where the river branches into a wide canal (Banjir Kanal, clearly visible from the Dukuh Atas bridge), and the other at Pintu Air where the river is divided into two canals. One canal follows Jl. Juanda, Jl. Gadjah Mada and Jl. Hayam Wuruk, the other lines Pasar Baru and Gunung Sahari.

One may wonder why the city has such an elaborate water network. The answer is that at the beginning of this century, or even before, Jakarta had already had to cope with floods.

By the end of this century, with a population close to 10 million, the infrastructure has not been expanded. No parallel canals to the west and east of the existing canals have been dug to accommodate water from the newly built areas in Greater Jakarta.

In order for Jakarta's drainage system to function properly, drains should be constructed according to strict technical specifications, and the existing drains maintained properly. Negligence in maintenance has proven disastrous.

One cannot help feel that our society has no tradition of urban life, hence there is no urge to properly manage urban facilities. A well-functioning drainage network does not seem to be a priority with the city planners at the city administration. This is one main cause of the recent terrible floods which promise to become even worse in the next few years.

S. HARMONO

Jakarta