Under clouded skies
Under clouded skies
The gloomy sky over Jakarta these days appears to be having an
effect on many people's way of thinking. The Jakarta city
administration seems to believe it does not need to take any
precaution against the arrival of the annual rainy season.
So, in the lead-up to this year's change of climate there has
been no campaign to tell the residents to clean up their drains.
Nor have there been any activities to clear the clogged rivers
and canals of garbage. There are 80 flood prone areas in the
capital -- the seat of the central government -- and the number
is too high to bear.
The authorities are fatalistic about the onset of the rainy
season, despite the familiar problems it invariably causes in
this metropolis of 10 million people. The flooding will not only
inundate slum areas but also newly built residential quarters.
Traffic congestion will certainly appear. All of these familiar
problems can be attributed to equally familiar causes: a high
urbanization rate, poor public discipline and a corrupt mentality
among bureaucrats.
The heavy downpour that hit Jakarta early this week brought
the city to a standstill, without the authorities issuing a
warning about a possible calamity. This inaction has also become
familiar. Among the people there has been a common fear that if
the rains fall in the late afternoon they will cause complete
chaos, because even on a bright, normal day the traffic snarls
are horrendous.
Cars move at a slow pace, travelling bumper to bumper for
miles and miles. Traffic lights are out of action and at many
crowded crossroads police officers are nowhere to be seen. It is
no exaggeration to say that the picture of Jakarta's chaotic
traffic is the ugliest in the world. According to many travel
writers, traffic conditions in a given country provide the true
picture of its rule of law.
There have been some efforts to avoid the arrival of more
dangerous floods but conditions are the same, if not worse. So,
the city authorities have not been able to answer the classic
question: What is wrong with your system? A recent newspaper
report, however, pointed to something more serious. "The city
administration said yesterday it needed to delay a plan to
purchase trucks for its sanitary agency and public order office
since the funds allocated for the vehicles were used to pay for
55 sedans and five buses for councillors." The authorities in
charge of this problem should have their heads examined.
According to data at the city administration, the government
is able to operate only 600 garbage trucks to dump the 25,000
cubic meters of garbage produced by the city's residents every
day. Of this total, only 23,000 cubic meters can be transported
to the dump center. So, the remaining 2,000 cubic meters are
thrown by "creative" people into the nearest river. Rivers,
drains and canals have long been important parts of the
metropolis because the people have used them as cheap garbage
dumps.
Floods are also caused by the construction of new roads and
houses, which pay no heed to their surroundings. The best example
of this is the inundation of the first toll road linking the city
and the international airport of Soekarno-Hatta only a few years
after its construction. In other parts of the city too, huge
construction works cause major damage to existing drainage
systems and the contractors do not feel the need to shoulder
responsibility for the destruction. And the corrupt city
officials turn blind eyes to reality and deaf ears to the
people's complaints. They have been suddenly submerged.
It is useless to call on the city administration to rid the
licensing business or development agencies of corrupt officials
because the graft has been built in to their mentality. But
shouldn't they at least have to evaluate the environmental impact
of new projects and once in a while listen to the people's
grievances?