Sanitary agency races against time to rid rivers of garbage

Triwik Kurniasari ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 01/19/2009 6:02 PM  |  City

The city sanitation agency is flexing its muscles, cleaning up a mound of flotsam and jetsam from city rivers for fear that another flood could hit the city, an official said Saturday.

The agency's head, Eko Bharuna, said his agency deployed 842 dump trucks and fielded 500 officers from five municipalities to take out the garbage carried along by floods since Tuesday.

"We are focusing more on flood-prone areas, such as areas along the Ciliwung, Pesanggrahan *in South Jakarta* and Sunter *North Jakarta* Rivers," Eko told The Jakarta Post.

He said more than 20,000 cubic meter of garbage had piled up following heavy rain over the past few days.

The biggest mound, or around 1,800 cubic meters of waste, was spotted at Kalibata Bridge in South Jakarta, he said.

"The space beneath the bridge was clogged with garbage. Similarly, garbage, which previously blocked Manggarai sluice gate *also in South Jakarta*, could not pass the bridge due the higher water level," Eko said.

"Such a thing has never happened before. It took us three days, from Wednesday to Friday, to clear it.

"We could not use forklifts to take clear it because the mound was mostly domestic garbage. We need to cut it into pieces *before taking it out*," he said.

The agency, which was assisted by 100 military and police officers to clean up the trash, needed 43 dump trucks to ferry the trash to Bantar Gebang dumpsite in Bekasi.

He said his agency would also coordinate with the Coordination Board of Disaster Mitigation (Satkorlak) to prevent garbage from piling up and clogging the rivers again.

"If the water level in Depok sluice gate rises, we will field our men to some locations across the city to handle the garbage problem."

Heavy downpour over the past couple of days has caused a number of rivers in the city to break their banks, inundating hundreds of homes and forcing thousands of Jakartans to head for shelters.

Earlier, the public works agency head Budi Widiantoro said the city's clogged sewerage and waterways were the major causes of flooding.

"Because of the garbage, both micro- and macro-drainage systems in the city were only able to perform at 50 to 70 percent of their capacities," Budi said.

He said water tended to overflow onto the street during heavy downpour because of the excess of garbage in the city's sewerage system.

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