Starting this September, the Denpasar administration will implement a community-based program in an attempt to clean the capital's flood-prone and garbage-filled rivers.
"The program will target five rivers: the Badung, Tagtag, Teba, Pekaseh and Ongan. The combined length of the sections of rivers targeted in the program is 27,290 kilometers," Made Sutama, head of the Denpasar public works agency's irrigation department, said.
Sutama said the program was inspired by a successful river cleaning and revitalizing program that targeted the Kali Code River in Yogyakarta. "In the Kali Code program, the local residents were employed as workers and supervisors," Sutama explained.
Two supervisors will be assigned for each 200 meter-section of the Badung River, which is not only the largest of the five, but Denpasar's most central river. Two supervisors will be assigned two supervisors for each 400-meter section of the river.
*The supervisors will be selected from local residents who live next to the river," he added.
The program will involve residents in at least 21 villages and sub-districts along the rivers. More than 130 residents have already been selected for the program.
"These residents have undergone training sessions and have been equipped with the tools necessary to clean the rivers with. Besides monitoring and cleaning the rivers, they are also tasked with educating their neighbors on the importance of keeping the rivers clean," he said.
Each worker will receive a daily payment of Rp 27,000 (US$2.70).
The program, he said, was necessary given that all previous river cleaning strategies failed to achieve their objectives.
"Deploying workers from the city garbage management agency and imposing sanctions on residents who dump garbage into the rivers has failed to keep them clean," he said.
Recruiting local residents to monitor and clean the rivers, Sutama said, was expected to make their neighbors too embarrassed to dump garbage into the rivers.
As part of the effort, the agency has also provided each hamlet in participating villages with one garbage cart.
Head of Pemecutan Kelod sub-district, Kompyang Gede, expressed his support for the program. Eight of the 15 hamlets his sub-district lie along the banks of the Teba river.
"This river is quite dirty and many residents still treat it as a garbage dump. Now the program will hire 11 local residents to monitor this river and they are very familiar with this area and the residents who live here," he said.
As many as 18 rivers run through Denpasar.
