Jakartans told to beware of food, fuel shortages

Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta could face a worst case scenario, including food and fuel shortages, due to possible widespread flooding over the next few days if the city administration failed to anticipate the disaster, officials said over the weekend.

Almost all of the city's warehouses are located in flood prone areas, including the rice warehouses of the City Logistics Agency (Dolog) in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, said Ismarlan A. Karim, the head of logistics monitoring at the Jakarta Economic Affairs Office.

He said that the fuel storage center of state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina in Prumpung, North Jakarta, which supplies gasoline and kerosene to the city, was also located in a flood- prone area.

It was also be impossible to distribute the salted fish stored in warehouses in North Jakarta should major floods hit the area, which is below sea level.

In the event of a natural disaster, administration officials usually distribute packages of rice with noodles and salted fish to flood victims.

Since the massive floods that hit the city last February, the city administration has failed to take the necessary measures to tackle the problem. To avoid flooding, important warehouses should be raised above the ground.

"It's not our job. It's the responsibility of the City Public Works Agency," he said.

But Ismarlan said that his office had asked the Flood Control Crisis Center (Pusdalsis) to prepare large trucks to transport supplies if worst came to worst.

The crisis center, which is located on the second floor of City Hall, was reestablished last week after floods on Monday and Tuesday. Representatives from city offices and agencies, as well as police and military officers, were have been assigned to the center.

The center, which is directed by City Secretary Ritola Tasmaya, receives reports from the city's five municipalities on the latest situation, although the reports are often late.

Last year, floods disrupted food and fuel supplies as the warehouses, and fuel storage tanks in Prumpung, were cut off by the floodwaters. Due to a lack of large trucks, supplies of food and fuel were halted.

The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) earlier predicted that floods might occur up until Feb. 20 due to heavy rain and a high tide.

Besides the threat of shortages due to distribution problems, widespread floods would inundate residential areas with highly polluted water from the city's 13 rivers, thus posing a danger to public health.

At least 300 major waste producers, including hospitals, do not process their waste properly before dumping it into the rivers.

If the rivers were to overflow, the polluted water could cause skin diseases and other serious health problems.

"It's dangerous although they (the 300 waste producers) only represent about 10 percent of the total number of 3,000 medium and large industries here," said Ridwan Panjaitan, the head of the environmental impact analysis division of the City Environmental Office.

Ridwan claimed that his office had sent letters to the polluters urging them to improve their liquid waste processing capabilities.

Although floods routinely occur in the city, no serious measures to prevent them have been put in place by the administration.