Medan to get tough on waste

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan, North Sumatra

The Medan municipality government and legislative council agreed on Thursday to impose a new bylaw on sanitary, which would carry a severe fine or a jail sentence for those who throw garbage anywhere in the city.

Deputy speaker of the Medan legislative council Sakty Batubara said that under the new bylaw people, who throw garbage in the city's main thoroughfares or other public spaces, would be subjected to a Rp 1 million (US$125) fine or a jail sentence up to six months.

The severer fine and jail sentence would be imposed to people who recklessly throw garbage from a moving vehicle.

"They are liable to a fine of Rp 1.5 million and a six months jail sentence," he said without elaborating.

Sakty went on that the new bylaw would take into effect in February, pending an adjustment period for three months to the public, starting from now.

"We need to disseminate the bylaw first to the public, so that they will not be surprised when the new bylaw finally is executed," Sakty told The Jakarta Post at his office.

As part of the bylaw dissemination program, Medan Mayor Abdillah said that his administration would immediately provide some 10,000 to 15,000 small rubbish bins throughout the city, so that residents could dispose of their garbage.

"Once the infrastructure is completed, then there will be no excuse for people to throw garbage anywhere they like, that will only make the city dirty," he said.

Abdillah called on the city residents to improve on cleanness and orderliness in Medan, saying that it would benefit the city, for example, in terms of tourism.

"The cleanness of the city will attract more tourists to Medan, which can increase the income of Medan's residents," he said.

Yusar, the head of Medan's Sanitary Office, admitted that garbage still posed a problem for the Medan municipality administration. The volume of garbage dumped by city residents remained high, and will reach its peak during the religious festivities Idul Fitri and Christmas, and the New Year holiday. "At least 1,543 ton of garbage is dumped daily in Medan. This huge volume has been our concern," he said.

Yusar said that the administration had to dispatch 131 trucks every day to discard some 1,500 tons of garbage produced by Medan's households and industries.

Compared to Jakarta metropolitan city, where 6,000 tons of garbage is unloaded daily to garbage dumps throughout the city, the volume of garbage dumped daily in Medan is rated small.

But, Medan's figure is much higher than the volume of garbage dumped in the South Sumatra capital of Palembang, where only 500 tons of garbage is dumped daily in the city.