The present hot topic of Jakarta’s horrific traffic jams has added to the many huge problems the country is now facing such as the Bank Century issue, legal corruption, tax broker, gas canister explosions, to mention just a few.
The traffic problem is only one among other acute problems Jakarta has, and aside from annual flooding there’s another acute problem, the shortage of clean water.
Jakarta is actually traversed by 13 rivers, and all of them have been used to dump rubbish by residents living along their banks, as well as the untreated waste water by factory owners in Jakarta and its surrounding cities. All of these have caused the rivers’ water quality to be very low.
The very low quality of Jakarta rivers and the drastic drop of the West Java’s Jatiluhur reservoir’s quality of its water, the main source of raw material for the Jakarta State-run Water Company (PDAM), has sent us a message that a severe clean water crisis in the capital city is looming, and could lead to more havoc.
Keeping in mind the above condition, we have to think about this problem very seriously. To deal with it, an inter-ministerial coordination such as ministries of public works, forestry, mining and mineral resources, and environment needs to be done. The West Java provincial government, being the region where the Jatiluhur reservoir resides along with its Citarum River basin where the reservoir’s water derives from, should be included.
If I might recall, I had been working with the Public Works Ministry’s agency for research and development from 1980 up until 1997. Since that period on and even before that, the Citarum River basin has been one of the most important rivers being given development priority by the directorate-general of water resources.
The reason was because of the river’s important functions in providing irrigation water and hydroelectricity for part of West Java and Jakarta, and altogether as a raw material for the Jakarta’s PDAM. However, it seems that the Public Works Ministry’s efforts to develop the Citarum River have not been successful because of an apparent lack of coordination with the above ministries.
These could be seen, during rainy season every year, from the chronic flood of this river which becomes a major source of sufferings for the residents of southern part of Bandung such as the industrial sub-districts of Bale Endah and Majalaya as experts said was the result of severe ecological and environmental conditions of the river.
To dream about clean rivers in Jakarta is a long way away. But, there are places to learn, for instance, one might see in Tokyo when in April 1991, I was in the city hotel where a river flows and could see clean water and colorful fish scurrying down below. It means that the Japanese government and of course the Tokyo governor was quite aware of the importance of water quality for its residents.
Therefore, to at least achieve a healthy water quality that fulfills the admissible limit, a concerted effort at the coordinating ministry level is badly needed. They could propose a presidential taskforce to cope with it before more calamities come to the fore such as endemic diseases because of difficulties finding clean water, and finding high-rise buildings slanting and later on collapsing because of land downgrading as a result of heavy water pumping.
Meanwhile, the capital city of Indonesia, according to the latest population census, is home to more than 8 million people. But during the five-day working days, the number surges to around 11 million during the day time and up to 9 p.m. as the 3 million people living around and working in Jakarta commute a every day by cars, trains, buses and motor cycles to and from their offices.
These vehicles, arriving every day from Jakarta’s surrounding cities such as Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi and those from Jakarta themselves, flock to the capital city’s roads at the same time and have, consequently, caused severe and horrific traffic jams.
M. Rusdi
Jakarta
