The Jakarta administration is waiting for a World Bank loan channeled by the Finance Ministry before starting its project to dredge 13 main rivers.
Deputy Governor Prijanto said he would not discuss the logistics of the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative (JEDI), saying the administration had not yet received further information on the fund.
JEDI is expected to reduce the occurrence of huge floods from once every five years to once every 25 years.
City spokesman Cucu Ahmad Kurnia said the majority of the funds would be spent on dredging the rivers.
"The decision remains with the Finance Ministry. We understand that to receive such a loan, certain conditions have to be met," Cucu said.
Earlier last week, the director general for debt management at the Finance Ministry, Rahmat Waluyanto, said the World Bank had offered US$135.5 million in loans in the first quarter of 2010 for flood control through the JEDI project.
"The city administration would only receive $56.4 million," he said told news portal vivanews.com.
The administration had initially hoped to receive the loan by the end of last year, but it was postponed until May and delayed again until July. There has been no progress since.
JEDI, another effort to tackle floods in the capital, is an initiative to dredge 13 rivers including the Cakung River in East Jakarta, Sunter, Kamal and Angke Rivers in North Jakarta, and the Ciliwung River.
The river dredging is part of a short-term plan and will be carried out over a three-year period using equipment from the Netherlands.
JEDI is a joint project between the Public Works Ministry and the city's public works agency.
Earlier this month, Prijanto said his administration plans to procure river-dredging boats.
The procurement would be proposed in the 2010 city budget, he said.
Currently, the city only has two dredgers that were donated by the Dutch government in November 2008.
"It would be ideal if every municipality had two dredging vessels," Prijanto said.
City public works agency head Budi Widiantoro said one small dredger would cost Rp 2 billion, while a medium-size one would cost Rp 2.5 billion.
In a bid to battle the annual floods that paralyze the city every rainy season, the public works agency is dredging 64 sections of sub-micro rivers, targeting to clear 1.5 million cubic meters of silt and debris.
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