Tangerang garbage left uncollected

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

Untransported garbage is a complex problem that remains unresolved here.

Take a look in front of the Harmoni Mas shops along Jl. Gatot Subroto, Cimone, Tangerang, where piles of garbage are always to be found. Worse, an offensive odor hangs in the air, harmful to both human health and the environment.

"We have repeatedly filed complaints with the subdistrict chief, district chief and even with the mayor about the garbage," M. Said, a store owner, told The Jakarta Post recently.

He said there were only two dump trucks that transported the trash from the site twice a day to the municipality's final dumping site in Rawa Kucing, Neglasari subdistrict. Half of the garbage was left untransported.

Tangerang has a population of over 1.3 million, according to the latest census conducted in April this year. Referring to the World Bank's estimate that individuals produce an average of 2.5 liters of trash per day, the head of the municipal sanitary office, Daryanto, estimates that the population of Tangerang is creating 3,290 cubic meters of waste daily.

He told the Post that only 1,080 cubic meters (32 percent) of the waste could be transported to the Rawa Kucing dump each day, while the remaining 2,210 cubic meters were left untransported.

Daryanto said the office had only 79 dump trucks and 11 armroll trucks with a capacity of six cubic meters each to transport the waste to Rawa Kucing twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

The municipal administration had promised to provide 10 new dump trucks this year, he said.

The sanitary office had earlier proposed purchasing 100 container units at a cost of Rp 1.2 billion, which would be able to transport about 3,000 cubic meters of waste a day.

Daryanto also complained about undisciplined local residents who threw away their garbage indiscriminately.

"People from various places throw the waste in front of the Harmoni stores in Cimone and several other places at any time, giving the impression that the garbage is not being transported," he said.

Daryanto added that about 130 cubic meters of commercial garbage produced by five large markets in Tangerang, namely Anyar, Cikokol, Cileduk, Ramadhani and Malabar, were handled by private companies that collected Rp 500 daily from traders.