Technical woes delay dump opening
Technical woes delay dump opening
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The opening of a high-tech waste treatment facility in Bojong,
Klapanunggal subdistrict, Bogor, has been delayed for at least
two months as the operator clears up technical problems.
"The waste treatment operating company needs more time to
finish all the technical preparations to ensure that the facility
can run perfectly from the start of its full operation," city
spokesman Muhayat said on Tuesday.
Muhayat said the problems included financial constraints faced
by the company in procuring conveyor belts to select the garbage
to be processed by the bale presses at the facility.
Muhayat was speaking after a meeting at City Hall between
Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso, City Sanitation Agency head Selamat
Limbong and the board of directors of the waste treatment
facility operator, PT Wira Guna Sejahtera.
The company earlier promised the Bojong facility would be
fully operational by the middle of March.
PT Wira president director Sofyan Hadiwijaya said the facility
had to separate organic waste from inorganic waste because the
bale presses could only process inorganic waste.
"In the waste treatment process abroad, inorganic waste and
organic waste come in separately. Here, we have more work to do
as people mix both types of waste," he said.
He also said the humidity here made the garbage watery and
more difficult to process.
At the Bojong facility, solid waste will be pressed while
liquid waste will first be neutralized using fermentation
technology. According to Sofyan, organic waste will be burned to
ash and inorganic waste will be pressed into bales.
The facility has been in a trial period since early February,
causing protests by residents concerned by pollution from the
dump.
In an apparent effort both to calm the protests by residents
and to separate the garbage, Sofyan said the facility had hired
about 1,000 residents from the three subdistricts nearest the
dump.
In a labor-intensive process, the workers will line up on both
sides of the 33-meter-long conveyor belts and separate by hand
the organic and inorganic waste for further processing.
Expected to be fully operational by June, the facility will be
capable of processing about 2,000 tons of garbage a day, or one-
third of Jakarta's total daily waste of 6,000 tons.
Garbage has become a serious problem in Jakarta since the
repeated closures of the Bantar Gebang dump in Bekasi in response
to protests by residents. The Bekasi dump has been used by
Jakarta for 15 years.
Besides PT Wira Guna Sejahtera, eight other investors have
signed memorandums of understanding with the administration on
various garbage projects. However, the investors have complained
of financial constraints that are preventing them from realizing
the projects.