The city administration is pushing to build more communal toilets to address the issue, but experts argue it will not be enough to solve the problem.

A 53-year-old resident of Penjaringan in North Jakarta, who asked to use the pseudonym Apriyandi, was one of them. He lives in a low-income housing area under the toll road in Pejagalan subdistrict in Penjaringan which stretches along the polluted banks of Angke River and lacks basic hygiene and sanitation facilities.

Apriyandi himself lives in a 30-square-meter home, which provides insufficient space to build a private toilet for his family of four.

“That’s why we have to defecate outside [our home] near the river. We often do it quietly,” he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Apriyandi’s neighborhood has some shared toilet facilities, but they are not enough to cover thousands of people living in the neighborhood. While acknowledging the health impact of dumping his waste improperly, he said that defecating in open spaces was just more practical and cheaper, since people need to pay to use the public toilet.

“It’s not just me, many others do the same. The river is just closer than the toilet and I don’t have to pay and queue,” said Apriyandi, who works as a day laborer.