Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama. (thejakartapost.com/Edna Tarigan)

Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has expressed his wish that the trucks that are transporting garbage from Jakarta to the Bantar Gebang solid waste treatment facility operate 24 hours a day despite a new agreement restricting their operational hours to between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.

"We are going to ask [the Bogor government] to allow garbage trucks to operate 24 hours per day," Ahok said at City Hall on Friday.

Garbage trucks have been sent back to Jakarta by a group of residents of Cilengsi, Bogor, West Java for several days. Their action ended on Thursday after Ahok told police to arrest the people who stopped the garbage trucks.

City Sanitation Agency head Isnawa Adji said that nearly 3,000 tons of the 6,500 tons of garbage produced daily in Jakarta was not collected on Wednesday

Following the blockade, the Jakarta city administration and the Bogor regency administration agreed to limit the operational hours of garbage trucks to between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.

With the agreed period of time, the city sanitation official said, the garbage trucks could only made 700 trips in one day to transport the garbage to Bandar Gebang. Meanwhile, the city needs the trucks to make about 1,000 trips to carry all the garbage the city produces daily.

Ahok said he would talk further with relevant parties like the National Police, the West Java Police and the Bogor Police to discuss an extension of the garbage trucks'€™ operational hours.

According to the governor, he was phoned by Vice President Jusuf Kalla who wanted to know about the garbage problem. "The Vice President discussed [it] with me. He wants this problem immediately solved," Ahok said. (bbn)

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