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Jakarta commences sewer construction
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Garbage floats in the Krukut River in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, in this undated file photo. (kompas.com/Anastasia Aulia)
T
he Jakarta administration has kicked off the construction of a wastewater pipeline network amid efforts to build a domestic wastewater management system (SPALD) that complies with environment quality standards and improves public access to proper sanitation.
Acting Jakarta governor Heru Budi Hartono launched construction of a wastewater pipeline last week in Pluit, North Jakarta. He said in a statement that the development was partly aimed at "achieving the goal of proper and safe sanitation”.
Jakarta, home to over 10 million people, has experienced poor water quality and sanitation in past years, and ranks as the capital city with the second lowest sanitation standard in Southeast Asia, according to the central government.
But data from Statistics Indonesia showed an improvement in the city's sanitation. It recorded that access to decent sanitation reached over 92 percent of households in Jakarta last year, far above the national average of 80 percent of households.
That figure, however, was not distributed equally across city as only 88 and 85 percent of households in Thousand Islands and North Jakarta, respectively, had the same standard of services.
Besides improving access to wastewater services, councilor Ida Mahmudah said during her visit to Pluit in mid-July that the development of wastewater pipelines is important to prevent the spread of Escherichia coli bacteria, which often come from feces and wastewater.
Ida, who chairs the Jakarta City Council commission D overseeing city development, said that the threshold for contamination of such bacteria should be 2,000 per 100 ml of water. She noted that in North Jakarta, it has reached 3 million per 100 ml of water, a level she claimed could endanger the health of the community.
