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Jakarta to extend remote working as air quality fails to improve
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A gray haze shrouds the Jakarta skyline on Aug. 23. Thousands of public employees in the capital were ordered to work from home starting on Aug. 21 in a two-month trial aimed at improving the city's air quality.
(AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
J
akarta is planning to extend remote working for public employees and ramp up water misting from tall buildings as the city's air quality has not improved despite various efforts to curb air pollution.
To reduce the number of vehicles in the city and improve the air quality, the Jakarta administration ordered half of its public employees to work from home last month as part of an effort that was planned to continue until Oct. 21.
Jakarta acting governor Heru Budi Hartono said authorities were now considering extending the remote working system for city public officials at least until the rainy season starts, which is predicted by the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) to be in November.
"We plan to implement remote working until the start of the rainy season," he said on Sunday as reported by Kompas.com, "However, we will evaluate the effectiveness of the remote working system [to curb air pollution] first, perhaps sometime this month, before we extend it."
The capital employs around 200,000 people, 60,000 of whom are civil servants.
Read also: Remote working, artificial rain have little effect on Jakarta pollution
Heru said authorities would also set up water mist generators, manufactured by the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), in all city-owned buildings, to help clean the air. He said, however, that it would take some time to do so because BRIN could not mass produce the generators.
