W

ith the rainy season predicted to peak in less than two weeks, it has been revealed that a number of the city'€™s water pumps are unusable as a result of old age or having become clogged with refuse.

The city of around 10 million people is penetrated by 13 rivers, and with 40 percent of the land area lying below sea level, flooding is a plague that strikes Jakartans almost yearly.

Amid the ongoing river '€œnormalization'€ program, the effectiveness of which is questionable and which has drawn criticism from water management scholars, the city now relies heavily on its pumps.

According to data from the Jakarta Water Management Agency, of the capital'€™s total 409 water pumps, 24 are broken but still function, while 23 are unusable.

Three of nine pumps at the Melati reservoir pump-house in Central Jakarta, for example, are currently being repaired following electrical short circuits in the machines caused by waste that had jammed the 12-year-old pumps.

'€œThe pumps are often clogged with refuse. Waste, particularly rubber tires, can fatally damage the machines by causing them to overheat,'€ said Marsudi, a pump operator who has worked at the pump house since 1984.

Melati reservoir pump-house manages water flows from several small rivers, including the Gresik River in Menteng, Central Jakarta, and the Cideng Bawah River in Setiabudi, South Jakarta, as well as smaller waterways from local neighborhoods, in order to prevent flooding on major thoroughfares Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Thamrin.

Similarly, Mulyadi, an operator at Kapuk 1 pump-house in North Jakarta, pointed to trash as the main threat to water pumps. One of four pumps installed at the pump-house in 2003 once broke down after being jammed by a rubber tire, he said, adding that old age had never caused any on the pumps to malfunction.

Mulyadi was hopeful that risk of damage would be minimized by a trash filter installed in 2014.

Water management agency head Teguh Hendarwan, meanwhile, said that old age and damaged parts were behind most pump malfunctions. Many pumps installed in the 1970s, he said, had not been updated and were sparsely maintained, adding that trash was indeed a major threat to the machines.

'€œWe often find rubber car tires or even mattresses jamming water pumps,'€ he said.

Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama revealed that several recent floods had been caused by malfunctioning pumps, which he implied might have been deliberately caused by certain individuals.

An underpass near Gembrong toy market in East Jakarta was flooded by up to 30 centimeters of water. An underpass in Dukuh Atas in Central Jakarta was also flooded late last year.

Both incidents were found to have been caused by broken pumps.

'€œIt is strange that Gembrong was flooded, because it never has been before. Civil servants in East Jakarta initially said that the pump in Gembrong was broken because a cable was bitten by a rat, but when I checked, the cable was fine, but was not installed properly. I suspect sabotage,'€ Ahok said.

Early last year, Ahok blamed flooding on state electricity operator PLN, which had cut all power in North Jakarta, thereby turning off all pumps in the area.

Separately, National University of Singapore Asia Research Institute senior fellow Rita Padawangi said the trend of concreting riverbanks increased the burden of flood mitigation on high-maintenance water pumps and concrete waterways.

'€œConcreting waterways and riverbanks does not provide a solution to flooding because that'€™s not where the problem lies,'€ Rita told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

She explained that Jakarta could not bring an end to flooding without fixing the environmental system, which meant that Jakarta must cooperate with upstream areas such as Depok, as well as Bogor city and regency. Concreting, Rita went on, merely increased the burden on pumps.