Most firms ignore waste treatment
Damar Harsanto, Jakarta
Only 26 percent of a total of 2,173 medium and large-scale enterprises in the city regularly submitted samples of their liquid waste for assessment, the Jakarta Environmental Management Agency said.
The remaining 1,602 enterprises failed to deliver reports of the liquid waste they produced as set out in gubernatorial decree No.299/1996.
The decree requires all enterprises producing liquid waste to treat the waste before disposing of it into rivers. It also requires firms to send samples of the treated waste to the agency every three months.
The companies on the list include hotels, apartments, office buildings, restaurants, hospitals, and industrial plants.
The above figures do not include registered small-scale enterprises such as community markets, small workshops and small offices which amount up to at least 15,845 concerns.
"Worse still, out of 571 companies which have sent their samples to us, only 35 percent, or 199 companies, comply with the decree and send us the samples every three months. The rest submit the samples every four months, six months, or even only once a year," head of the agency's liquid waste control division Joni Tagor Harahap told The Jakarta Post recently.
"No wonder the quality of our river water is getting worse," Joni said.
High levels of pollution in the city's 13 rivers is suspected of being behind the red tide phenomenon, which killed thousands of fish in Jakarta Bay in May.
Joni said his office had no legal powers to punish the unscrupulous companies.
"We only have the gubernatorial decree as a guideline -- it does not carry legal sanctions ... we need a bylaw which will give us stronger instruments to punish the violators."
However, Indonesian Center for Environmental Law head Rino Subagio said Joni's argument was spurious.
"The real issue here is whether the agency has the political will because the administration has ignored the existing Law No. 23/1997 on the environment.
"The law authorizes all environment management agencies to control the liquid waste treatment of any enterprises," he told the Post.
The law gave the administration the power to censure transgressing companies and the city could close companies down if they continued to ignore existing regulations, Rino said.
The law says companies found to be polluting the environment with liquid waste are given six months to improve their treatment facilities. If they fail to meet the deadline, the agency has the power to close the waste treatment facility, the area of production causing the waste, or the entire production process.