Jakarta seeks alternative dumpsite

Annastashya Emmanuelle and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Amid uncertainty about the capital's garbage disposal policy following the Bantar Gebang controversy, the Jakarta administration is approaching towns bordering Bekasi, Tangerang, Depok and Bogor to explore whether they may be able to assist in handling the city's trash.

The five administrations met on Thursday at the home affairs ministry to discuss the issue.

Aware of its inability to handle the garbage competently by itself, the city administration has suggested cooperation with private companies to manage the waste under the supervision of a board formed by two or more administrations.

Each of the administrations would be required to pay fees to the companies, based on the amount of garbage they dump. Should problems occur, such as environmental damage, the administrations could cut the fees paid to the companies as a punishment.

"Other administrations welcome the idea, therefore, we expect the board to be established," city administration spokesman, Muhayat, said.

The city produces more than 25,000 cubic meters, or 6,000 tons, of garbage a day. Most of the garbage is dumped at Bantar Gebang, which is located in Bekasi, West Java.

The Bekasi mayoralty closed the site down last week in response to environmental degradation caused by the dump. The closure caused panic within the city administration, as it had not prepared alternative sites or methods for processing the capital's garbage.

For several days, piles of untransported garbage were visible throughout the city, some of which still remain.

However, several days after the closure the Bekasi mayoralty agreed to reopen the dump, though with several conditions attached, including the construction of a medical center at the site.

Should the administration fail to improve conditions at the site by Jan. 31, 2002, the mayoralty has said it will close it down again.

The city administration, however, indicated that it might not be able to meet the deadline due to its limited budget.

This year the budget for garbage management was Rp 90 billion, while next year's reportedly amounts to Rp 220 billion.

The lack of transparency in the expenditure of funds has led to allegations of corruption in the City Administration Agency.

According to Muhayat, the city administration also planned to diversify the handling of garbage by, among other things, establishing new garbage dump sites, adding incinerators to some temporary dumps and converting trash into compost.

It also planned to send some of the city's garbage to Bangka regency in Bangka Belitung province following the signing last week of a memorandum of understanding allowing the administration to send 4,000 tons of garbage a day to the regency, which plans to use it to fill in disused tin mines.

Separately, the State Minister of Environment, Nabiel Makarim, called for people's participation in managing the city's garbage, by not dumping garbage recklessly and by separating organic from non-organic waste.

Households could process their organic waste into compost while the non-organic waste could later be taken to the city's final dumping site, Nabiel said on the sidelines of his visit to Bantar Gebang.

By doing so, less waste would need to be dumped at Bantar Gebang, thus reducing the burden on the site.

Unlike in the days preceding Nabiel's visit, Bantar Gebang was orderly, with no piles of garbage scattered on the fringes of the dump and with the leachete pool functioning properly.

The minister said that, in the long term, the city's garbage problem could be solved by combining several options such as investing in incinerators, and continuing with a properly managed sanitary landfill system, although incinerators were expensive and required skilled workers for the system to work efficiently.

"If our economic conditions improve this could be implemented. In the meantime, we don't have much of an option other than to manage our garbage with a sanitary landfill system," Nabiel said.

Bantar Gebang had been designed to operate as part of a sanitary landfill system, but the city administration had simply piled the garbage in the open.

"Mismanagement is the cause of the disaster of Bantar Gebang," Nabiel said, "This site should have been properly operated so that it didn't produce negative outcomes for the nearby residents."