The city administration wants to revitalize Ciliwung River by relocating  the riverbank residents to low-cost rented apartments.

Governor Fauzi Bowo said the city was still discussing the plan with the Office of the Coordinating Minister for the People’s Welfare in a number of meetings.

“I suggest that the people not be moved far and that they receive good [road] access,” he said Monday.

He said the city would be willing to shoulder the subsidy for the low-rent apartments if the central government agreed to fund the land and building investment.

“We will subsidize the rent as the tenants may only pay Rp 3,000 to Rp 5,000 per day and its not enough for the apartment operator.”

He said Minister Agung Laksono hoped the project would be completed before his term ended in 2014.

Deputy governor Prijanto said data on the people living on the Ciliwung riverbanks needed updating because many might only be renting.

“According to the last data, the number reached 70,000 buildings,” he said, adding the city had not calculated the number of necessary apartments.

Assuming that one building is occupied by a moderate number of three people, 210,000 people living on Jakarta’s Ciliwung banks would be affected by this policy.

A typical low-cost apartment like Marunda or Petamburan could provide about 600 to 1,000 apartment units. To accommodate all of the evicted the government and the city administration would at least need 70 apartment complexes or 700 towers with each having at least 100 units.

He said the city would not buy the residents the land they occupied nor compensate them as they were located on the riverbanks, which was managed by the central government and therefore state property.

“They are Indonesian citizens, so they should move to apartments.”

Sarwo Handayani, the assistant governor for development and the environment, concurred.

“We will not buy their land as there’s no way a house on the riverbanks can have a land certificate. If they do, we will settle this with the BNP [National Land Agency].”

She said the city wanted the area to be neat so it could resume its function as a flood controller and increase the city’s beauty.  

The city and central government will receive a US$150 million loan from the World Bank to dredge the rivers under the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative (JEDI).

JEDI is expected to reduce the occurrence of huge floods from once every five years to once every 25 years.

The city’s Public Works Agency plans to use the first disbursement of a World Bank loan to dredge the Melati dam in Central Jakarta and deepen the Ciliwung as well as Sentiong Rivers.

The Public Works Ministry’s Ciliwung-Cisadane Flood Control Office would work on two rivers — the Cengkareng drain in West Jakarta and Sunter River in North Jakarta.

The city agency head, Budi Widiantoro, said his agency was awaiting the first phase of loan disbursement.

The director-general for debt management at the Finance Ministry, Rahmat Waluyanto, recently said the World Bank had offered $135.5 million in loans in the first quarter of 2010 for flood control through JEDI. He said the city would only receive $56.4 million.

Public Works Ministry data shows Ciliwung river is one of the rivers that passes West Java and Jakarta provinces. The river’s source is located in Telaga Warna (Colorful Lake) on the foot of Mount Pangrago in Bogor.

The 119-kilometer river directly impacts a 440-kilometer area occupied by 3.5 million people in Jakarta and outside Jakarta.

A senior expert with the World Bank Indonesia, Risyana Sukarma, said JEDI would dredge rivers in a new fashion. The first step would be “mass dredging”, which is expected to be completed within three years.

As the scale of the dredging is bigger than the usual dredging, the project needs more space on the riverbanks for the ensuing sludge.

Non-contaminated sludge will be disposed near the waterways while contaminated sludge needs permanent discharge facilities.

The contaminated sludge can be recycled into building materials, according to a presentation designed by the World Bank.

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