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?