Jakarta's air gets dirtier every year

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While the President has set out to clean up politics, it seems the air in the nation's capital is only getting dirtier.

The latest report by the Jakarta Environmental Management Body (BPLHD) reveals that there were only 20 days this year -- up to and including September -- when the air quality was categorized as good, compared to 53 days in 2004 and 25 days in 2003.

A worsening trend is evident over the past five years with good air quality reaching 108 days in 2001 and 75 in 2002.

The report was based on the records of 14 monitoring posts across the city on pollutants, including nitrate nitrogen (NO2), SO2 (sulfate), lead (Pb), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (03) and particulate matter (PM10).

The Jakarta administration has blamed the rising level of air pollution in the city on the massive influx of vehicles, with at least 138 purchased in Jakarta every day.

Vehicular emission accounts for 70 percent of pollution in the city, while the remaining 30 percent comes from industrial estates and households, the report said.

Environmentalist Ahmad Safrudin said Jakartans who had noticed the weather had been warmer than usual of late could blame the worsening quality of the city's air.

"The Jakarta administration should also be blamed for this situation, particularly for its failure to develop open and green spaces and stop the conversion of green areas into housing or commercial estates," said Ahmad, who is also secretary-general of non-governmental organization Clean Emission Partnership (MEB).

He underlined that the function of open and green spaces was, as the city's lungs, to help neutralize pollutants.

Together with other environmentalists, Ahmad conducted a survey this year, which showed that open and green spaces in the city had further shrunk to 6.2 percent of the total city land area of 65,680 hectares, down from 8.6 percent in 2001.

This is a far cry from the expected 13.94 percent by 2010 as stipulated in the city's master plan 2000-2010.

"We've registered the massive conversion of green space across the city in the past three years into building estates, like in Cibubur in East Jakarta, Pulomas and Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta and Cilandak in South Jakarta. Sadly, little has been done by the administration to stop the conversion," he said.

He said the administration had apparently attempted to scale down its obligation to develop open and green space from 26.1 percent by 2005 in the previous master plan to 13.94 percent, allowing the conversion of more green spaces into commercial and business areas.