On clean environment

I refer to your front page article on June 7 titled Susilo wants public to shame dirty cities. It is encouraging to see President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono take up such issues and to press for better education as that's an important part of the long term solution. Hopefully it is not a one-off because it happens to be World Environment Day.

There's one major pollution factor however that Susilo has missed. Apart from the pollution that is visible, he also needs to talk about the issue of air pollution. This is an issue that cannot be solved by education and people's actions alone. This requires action by the government to reduce the amount of traffic on the roads and to reduce journey times.

Building new toll roads only solves part of the problem and additionally it is counterproductive as it encourages more people to travel by car.

The underlying issue here is that Jakarta lacks an extensive public transport system. OK, so the busway is a start and also the planned monorail which is already under construction. But this is moving too slowly and I doubt if this is enough to stem the growth in volume of traffic and average journey times.

What is at stake here is the damage to the environment, the effect on people's health of being caught up for so long in the pollution, and the economic effect on people's productivity due to wasting so much time.

Had the prize for cleanest mayoralty also included air quality as one of the criteria, I wonder if Central Jakarta would still have won.

CIARAN HARRON Jakarta