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outh Tangerang, a 147-square-kilometer city with 1.4 million people, has failed to implement a satisfactory waste management system because it lacks an adequate number of temporary trash disposal sites (TPS). Its final trash disposal site (TPA) can process only 30 percent of its total daily waste production, a recent ministry report said.

Furthermore, many of the existing TPS were not functioning properly, forcing a large number of residents to burn their trash and suffer the negative effects of air pollution, officials from the Environment and Forestry Ministry said in a statement after a recent visit to the city.

'€œThe administration should establish more temporary trash disposal sites [TPS] for the recycling of waste into fertilizer,'€ said deputy head for hazardous waste control Ilham Malik, who led the visit.

Division head for the Agency of Sanitation, Parks and Cemeteries, Yepi Suherman, told The Jakarta Post that the city'€™s 41 TPS were far from being adequate enough to accommodate the city'€™s daily waste production of 800 tons. The problem worsened with the fact that only 25 of them were operating well.

'€œEach TPS has a capacity to process trash from a maximum of 1,000 families, while the city has population of 1.4 million people,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

The establishment of TPS, according to Yepi, is under the authority of the City Planning Agency.

Speaking from Permata Pamulang, Ciputat, head of neighborhood unit (RT) VI Yanuar Hendratno told the Post that the TPS in his subdistrict was not operating because it had no manpower to manage it.

'€œThe construction of the TPS was completed a year ago and all the equipment needed has already been procured but the heads of the neighborhoods and communities have not come to an agreement as to who should manage it,'€ he said.

The TPS has remained empty because instead of putting trash into it, sanitation workers pile and burn the trash on the banks of the nearby Angke river.

'€œWe are forced to throw trash collected from 4,000 families of 21 neighborhoods in Permata Pamulang and its surroundings to the river bank behind the TPS,'€ he said.

He acknowledged that the piling up of trash on the river bank could cause flooding, and that burning the trash had caused air pollution.

A similar problem persists at the Puri Serpong housing complex, 1 kilometer away from Permata Pamulang. The waste in the complex is managed by Nudin, a local who claims himself the owner of an 800-square-meter plot of land that is now used as trash disposal site. He burns the waste there every day.

He said that he and local residents did not know that burning trash was against Bylaw No. 3/2013.

Both Yanuar and Nudin said that burning trash at a disposal site was far cheaper than paying illegal fees to hire trucks from the DKPP to transport the trash to the DKPP-operated TPA Cipeucang in the Cisauk district.

The TPA collected 150 tons, or 18.75 percent out of the 800 tons of waste that the city produced every day.

According to Yepi, TPA Cipeucang applies a sanitary landfill waste management system to reduce waste by burying and covering it with soil for decomposition within a certain period of time.

However, after four years of operation, TPA Cipeucang'€™s 2.5-hectare area is covered by a 6-meter-high mountain of trash with a bad smell affecting local residents and students at nearby schools. Materials that are hard to decompose such as plastic bags are seen in the hump.

Besides TPA Cipeucang, the city has another TPA operated by a private company, Abu & Co., in the Serpong district. The 2,000-square-meter site, which has been operating for six years, has no mountain of trash.

'€œThe site manages waste from 10,000 families living in BSD City [a housing complex in South Tangerang]. We collect around 30 tons of trash every day and burn 25 tons of unusable waste inside the incinerator,'€ company owner Kemal Pasya said.