Overloaded Optical Cables Cause Electricity Pole to Collapse in West Jakarta's Mangga Besar

An electricity pole on Mangga Besar Street in Taman Sari, West Jakarta, collapsed, suspected to be unable to withstand the load of piled-up optical cables that had left it in a corroded condition, on Sunday (12/4). “The optical cable pole was already corroded due to the accumulated cable load,” said the Head of the Data and Information Centre (Kapusdatin) of the DKI Jakarta BPBD, Mohamad Yohan, in his statement on Sunday, as quoted from detik.com. The incident occurred at 15:48 WIB. Officers rushed to the site and carried out handling. “It was handled by the P2B BPBD, Satpol PP, PPSU, sub-district personnel, police personnel, and Koramil personnel,” he said. The optical cables from the collapsed pole were seen dangling and touching the roof of a passing bus. As a result, traffic flow in the area was disrupted. The electricity pole was fully handled by 19:36 WIB. Yohan emphasised that there were no victims in the incident. The chaos of utility cables on the capital’s poles, including electricity poles, has been a longstanding nightmare in Jakarta. For years, both the DPRD has reminded the executive, and the provincial government has ordered cable providers on Jakarta’s poles to tidy them up. However, the problem remains a ghost. Several examples include three years ago when tangled cables claimed lives and caused injuries in Palmerah, West Jakarta, and Antasari in South Jakarta. Then, in December last year, the South Jakarta Road Infrastructure Sub-Department dealt with tangled and dangling utility cables that even made poles tilt in Tebet. To address the tangled cables, in December 2025, the provincial government together with the DKI DPRD approved a Regional Regulation on Utility Networks. This regulation was followed by drafting its derivative rules into a Governor’s Regulation as technical implementation guidelines.