It is strange how many of us have forgotten about the danger of bird flu – an epidemic which has killed 135 people nationwide since its outbreak in 2003. While the danger is surely not gone, the city has started loosen its state of alert against the possible return of the much-feared disease.
Even some city councilors have expressed their desire to revise the bird flu prevention bylaw, issued in 2007, in response to protests launched by those in the chicken slaughter business, who oppose the plan of the city administration to remove all chicken slaughterhouses from residential areas.
“After listening to the aspiration of the chicken business community, the City Legislative Council has decided to revise the 1997 bird flu prevention bylaw,” Achmad Husein Alaydrus, a Democratic Party councilor, said recently.
It seems that Alaydrus and other supporters of the bylaw revision are suffering from acute amnesia, forgetting the panicked Jakartans and the misery of bird flu patients when the epidemic hit the city.
We need to remind city councilors that Jakarta had been the country’s worst-stricken city by bird flu with 37 casualties. The most recent cases of bird flu were found in January – one in Jakarta and another in neighboring Bekasi.
The essence of the bylaw is to prohibit people from raising chicken in their backyards, which causes sanitation problems in this crowded city. Under the bylaw, all chicken slaughterhouses have to be relocated from residential areas.
The bylaw is undoubtedly necessary to anticipate any possible return of bird flu to the city because backyard chicken businesses in crowded areas are believed to be the culprits for the easy spread of the avian influenza virus (H5N1) across the city.
If city councilors want to help the chicken business communities, they must encourage related businesspeople to adjust themselves with the existing regulations.
Councilors also have to encourage Jakarta administration to immediately facilitate the construction of chicken slaughterhouses in all five municipalities across the city. It is regrettable that three years after the of enactment of the bylaw, the city could only develop one out of the five required slaughterhouses, which are expected to be ready for operation by April 24.
The city administration needs to be more serious in dealing with the issue because the pooling of chicken slaughterhouses is also important to maintain the chicken meat quality in which consumers often find formaldehyde.
The city has been on the right direction by having the bird flu control regulations in place. What we have to do is to make the regulation applicable and enforceable – but not revise it.
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