Public participation needed

Flooding continues to pose a danger to Jakarta because the city administration has yet to find a way to deal with the problem. However, flooding is not the problem of the Jakarta administration alone; it is also a problem for the citizenry.

Unfortunately, when floods occur the victims are mostly citizens who, for financial reasons, have no other choice but to live in areas vulnerable to flooding. The city administration, despite its weaknesses, has been working to prevent flooding in the capital through the implementation of various programs, many of which require public involvement.

Regrettably, these efforts have yet to bear fruit. The appeal to residents not to dump their garbage in the city's rivers or on the streets has not been successful. A gubernatorial decree making littering illegal has failed. And with these failed efforts, the dream of having clean rivers traversing the city remains just a dream.

It is clear that garbage dumped by residents into neighborhood drains and sewers has severely polluted Jakarta's rivers and larger waterways. And the administration's repeated warnings of the dangers posed to the flood control system by the careless dumping of waste have been useless.

Many sluice gates are clogged with garbage, endangering the whole flood control system. Another part of the system that has suffered from the dumping of garbage into rivers is the pump stations. Many of the pumps have been damaged after garbage was sucked up into them, shortening their life spans and putting pressure on maintenance teams.

The Indonesian capital has numerous pump stations, some of which were built more than 20 years ago. However, many of them are not operating because of age and, possibly, poor maintenance. Earlier this month, President Megawati Soekarnoputri officiated the reopening of five pump stations in South, Central, West and North Jakarta. These stations have the capacity to prevent thousands of hectares of land from being flooded.

But repairing old pump stations alone will not stop flooding in the capital. Minister of Resettlement and Regional Infrastructure Sunarno acknowledged that an integrated and strategic program was needed to deal with flooding, and that part of such a program needed to be the construction of the Eastern Flood Canal, which is still in the planning stages.

Unfortunately, the Jakarta administration is having trouble moving ahead with this project because of the amount of compensation being demanded by those residents whose property is needed for the canal.

The compensation being offered by the city is based on the value of the land according to the property tax the residents pay, which is officially Rp 600,000 per square meter in the area in question. In reality, however, the price of the land is much higher. This is why property owners want the city to pay more money for their land, which is the only asset of value many of these people posses. In the meantime, construction of the flood canal continues to be delayed.

While waiting for the canal project to commence, the repair of pump stations is a helpful measure. Still, it is clear that public participation is necessary in the effort to stop flooding. Unfortunately, the continued use of rivers as dumps by residents, and their refusal to accept the compensation being offered to them by the city for their land, are indicative of the public's resistance to the administration's initiatives.

A better plan must therefore be devised in order to find a win-win solution that will allow for public participation and enable the government to carry out its public service programs on schedule.