Challenges lie ahead for WB's dredging project

Agnes Winarti , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 05/15/2008 12:20 PM | City

Several scavengers sailed on crafts under the Cengkareng sluice gate, West Jakarta, on Monday, combing the river for floating plastic trash.

One particular pile of river trash has turned into a six-meter-wide "island" in the middle of the gateway.

Three scavengers disembarked onto the tiny "garbage land" to collect more plastic.

It has been a year since the old and corroded Cengkareng sluice gate functioned properly. Poor maintenance over the past five years has relegated the contraption into being a helpless witness to the frequent floods that hit the area due to high tides and torrential rain.

Gate operator Syaifuddin told The Jakarta Post on Monday he did not want to move the 24-meter-wide gate from its normal position in fear of not being able to put it back again.

"I am afraid it could not be moved again once it is under water," he said.

Syaifuddin, who has operated the gate since 1984, said he suspected the scavengers were collecting more than just plastic trash.

"The gate's rubber sills, as well as nuts and bolts and corroded iron bars were stolen. The theft could not have been carried out unless the thief was on a craft," he said, pointing to the where the four six-meter-wide gate doors broke the surface of the water.

He said he recently caught a thief unfastening nuts and bolts on the gate.

"I have reported to my superior about the condition of the sluice gate. That's all I could do," said Syaifuddin.

The gate is located on the Cengkareng Drain river, which runs from the west to the north of the city.

The gate functions to hold back high tides coming from Jakarta's coast, six kilometers to the north.

The broken gate has led to flooding in the homes of local residents, although Syaifuddin said the water was currently only a meter higher than its default height of two meters.

As some nearby houses lie at sea-level or below, he said heavy local rain combined with high tides from the ocean would cause flooding in the neighborhood.

The Cengkareng Drain has therefore been targeted for dredging under the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative (JEDI) Project, set to run between 2009 and 2012, and which is funded by a US$150 million loan from the World Bank.

"Compared to the usual dredging, this mass dredging will use state-of-the-art equipment and methods from the Netherlands, where advanced water management technology has proven reliable," a senior expert with World Bank Indonesia, Risyana Sukarma, said recently.

The bank will also finance a five-year dredging training program with a US$10 million grant.

Andi Bachtiar Yusuf, a film director currently working on a series of documentary projects covering 23 flood-prone areas along the west and east coasts of Jakarta, said he had found worse conditions than in Cengkareng Drain while filming in Muara Kamal, another target for the JEDI project.

Last week, Yusuf and his four crew members shot footage in four flood-prone areas, including Kamal, Tanjungan, Angke and Cideng Thamrin.

"I interviewed residents in Kamal, who said they received one meter flooding in their homes almost on a daily basis, and especially when there is rain and tide."

Yusuf, who has two documentaries in his portfolio, said he planned to complete two documentaries, one five minutes long and the other 20 minutes, by September this year, to be presented to the World Bank's officials on the JEDI project.

"Another one-and-a-half hour documentary about public perspectives on flooding will be released in July next year," he said.

The JEDI and training plans were designed by World Bank Indonesia's infrastructure specialist Hongjoo Hahm and flood management expert Janjaap Brinkman of Delft Hydraulics, an independent Dutch institute specializing in delta issues.

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