Garbage still headache for Medan mayoralty

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

The Medan administration is facing criticism from members of the city council over its inability to manage the estimated 411 tons of garbage produced in the city each day.

Councilors voiced their concerns during a plenary session on Tuesday.

"We believe the Medan administration has failed and has not been professional in handling the city's garbage," the council's deputy speaker Ibrahim Sakti Batubara told The Jakarta Post.

The garbage is heaped up in nearly every corner of the city, including along Medan's main thoroughfare. In some areas, such as on Jl. Sukaramai, Jl. Halat and Jl. Jamin Ginting, the piles of garbage have begun to spill into the streets, posing a traffic hazard for motorists.

The garbage situation simply added to the problems being faced by the administration in providing services to the public, Ibrahim said, adding that garbage management was important, as it related closely to public health issues.

When contacted separately, spokesman of the city administration Arlan Nasution argued that limited resources meant officials could only handle half of the total garbage produced.

"We only have 98 garbage trucks and 1,794 employees, and with those limited resources we can only remove some 55 percent of the total garbage daily," Arlan admitted.

The remaining 200 tons were left uncollected.

Arlan confessed that the accumulation of the garbage had been particularly pronounced after garbage workers held a four-day strike last week to demand better conditions.

Besides the resource limitations, the administration only has two garbage dumping sites, in Namobintang subdistrict in Deli Serdang and in Terjun subdistrict in Medan Labuhan, both located some distance from the city.

"It takes around three hours to get from the two dumping sites and back to the city," Arlan said.

In a bid to overcome the garbage problem, Medan Mayor Abdillah had offered to hand over responsibility for the issue to district and subdistrict administrations, beginning on Nov. 30, as part of efforts to implement Law No 22/1999 on regional autonomy.

"It is expected that heads of districts and subdistricts would be able to take full responsibility for the garbage problems in their respective areas and not depend on the mayoralty," Arlan said.

The proposal to shift responsibility for garbage management to the lower administrations was also criticized by the council, which said it would not be effective.

Councilor Ibrahim even proposed that garbage management be handed over to a private third party, with the administration assuming a control and monitoring role.