J

akarta Governor Fauzi Bowo is asking for the central government’s commitment to help the city overcome its chronic flood problems.

Fauzi lamented on Thursday that the city was still waiting for the central government’s efforts on starting a massive dredging project in Jakarta’s rivers.

“The city has agreed with the Public Works Ministry to work on the project together, but work has not yet started,” the governor told reporters.

Fauzi’s administration has spent the last two years waiting for the Finance Ministry to deliver US$150 million from a World Bank loan to pay for the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative (JEDI) to dredge the city’s main rivers.

Under the JEDI program, a joint project of the ministry and the Jakarta Public Works Agency, 13 rivers will be dredged, including the Cakung River in East Jakarta, the Sunter, Kamal and Angke rivers in North Jakarta and the Ciliwung River.

“Most of the city’s waterways have not been dredged for 30 years. We have had the funds for some time now, but we still cannot start the work,” Fauzi said.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said earlier this week that Jakarta’s rivers and waterways did not have the capacity to drain water from torrential rains quickly enough to prevent flooding.

The agency said that the limited drainage capacity would inevitably lead to the city suffering significant floods during the peak of the rainy season in January.

The BNPB said that all areas in the capital would be vulnerable to flooding when heavy downpours of 300 to 400 millimeters of rain per hour hit the city during the peak of the rainy season. The normal rainfall rate in Jakarta is between 50 and 100 millimeters per hour.

Each of the main waterways has a drainage capacity of between 17 and 80 percent of the rain water during heavy downpours.

Separately, Jakarta Public Works Agency water resource management chief Tarjuki said that the city had continued efforts to mitigate flooding.

Tarjuki said that since carrying out river dredging operations and the operation of the East Flood Canal in 2009, the city had reduced the number of flood-prone areas from 78 to 62 locations.

The agency also said that the city would be safe from prolonged inundation during rains.

The agency has also identified the 123 most flood-prone streets throughout the city.

Improvement projects had been completed to prevent flooding in 39 of those streets, with work for the other 84 expected to be completed by December.

Jakarta has suffered flood problems for decades.

In 2002, a major flood left around a quarter of the capital inundated. A total of 32 people were killed during the flood and as many as 40,000 were forced to seek refuge.

In 2007, the worst flooding in Jakarta’s history left about 70 percent of the city inundated, killing at least 57 people and driving more than 450,000 from their homes.