Trash piling up, Jakartans fear disease
Trash piling up, Jakartans fear disease
Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The City administration is hastily implementing stopgap measures
to prevent an outbreak of disease threatened by the mounting
piles of trash throughout Jakarta, neglected as a result of the
dispute over the Bantar Gebang dump site.
The specter of cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, influenza and
bronchitis now lingers over the capital, a result of the
authorities' ineptness in dealing with the garbage crisis.
If preventive measures are not consistently pursued, Jakarta
could be facing a possible epidemic by Christmas.
Jakartans are also being urged to be more careful in
discarding their trash, by either burning it or ensuring that
garbage was tightly sealed in plastic bags.
City Health Agency chief Abdul Kholik on Thursday warned that
"without proper treatment, the diseases could erupt in two to
five days."
Authorities have now resorted to spraying disinfectant
chemicals on the garbage, which is lying in the open in temporary
garbage lots and in the back of some 700 dump trucks parked in
sanitary offices across five mayoralties, to avert a health
crisis.
After initiating the spraying on Thursday, authorities said
the measure would suffice for five days.
But Health Agency officials soon made a desperate plea for
emergency funds as they may not be able to afford the Rp 76
million cost of the next round of spraying.
"We don't know how to finance it if the trash continues to
mount," Kholik complained, adding that the cost was Rp 200 per
square meter of garbage surface.
He claimed that some 300 health community centers and
hospitals in the city had been told to take pre-emptive steps to
prepare for an outbreak of disease.
Garbage has been building up since Monday, when the main
garbage dump site at Bantar Gebang in Bekasi was closed due to a
dispute between the Bekasi mayoralty and the Jakarta
administration.
Claims by the Jakarta administration that it had prepared
alternative sites have proven to be misleading, and as a result
garbage has either been left neglected in temporary community
dump sites or on board dump trucks that have nowhere to dispose
of it.
Jakarta and Bekasi reportedly continued to negotiate on
Thursday, but with little progress. Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso on
Thursday could only express his hope that the talks would soon
produce results.
The crisis has proven that the administration has no strategy
for adequately handling the 25,000 cubic meters produced by the
city every day.
According to Kholik, open garbage encourages the growth of
larva, which within two to three hours can produce flies and
other insects that cause germs to become airborne.
Members of the local council were full of recriminations on
Thursday but offered few solutions, focussing instead on past
suggestions they had made that could have averted the crisis.
Councillor Tjuk Sudono of the National Mandate Party urged the
administration to distribute huge trash bags so garbage would not
be left exposed in the open air.
"With the garbage neatly stored, the city buys time to find
alternatives for handling it," Tjuk of the council's commission D
for development affairs said.
He further rebuked the administration for disregarding past
council proposals on waste management, which included
constructing a giant waste incinerator.