On trash burning
I truly agree with everything Melinda Tan wrote in her letter to the editor some time ago about trash burning and the improper dumping of trash.
In Lebak Bulus, South Jakarta, it seems everyone is burning trash. Even the Hospital on Fatmawati burns their trash. Government offices and their workers burn trash.
We have a few trash collectors who live on our street. Each day they go from house to house picking the trash up from our neighbors for a monthly fee. They are supposed to take the trash to a drop off at a certain location for removal. What do they do instead? They burn the trash because it is easier than hauling it all the way to the designated location.
This means that one trash man almost always burning stuff in front of our house, the other trash man is always burning on the right side of our house! On the left side of our house is a school for the handicapped. They use to burn their trash and would also burn tires, for which they claimed, to keep mosquitoes away.
We started getting nose bleeds and headaches and my wife who suffers from asthma was always struggling to breathe. After complaining to the sub-district office and the school administrators, they eventually stopped burning. Most of the time we have to shut all our doors and windows because there is so much smoke from people burning trash. It has gotten to the point that we do not know what to do.
We were pleased to see that there is a new state regulation issued in February 2005, that makes trash burning illegal and all offenders will be put in prison for six months or fined Rp 50 million, but as usual, what is the point in having a law if it is never enforced?
We have tried complaining directly to the trash collectors, we have talked to the sub-district chief and the neighborhood chief. So far nothing has changed. It is very sad because Lebak Bulus is actually a nice place to live with many beautiful trees and a relatively nice air quality. Isn't there anything that can be done to stop this awful practice?
DANIEL MORAN, Jakarta