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Flood victims struggle to get back on their feet
Jakarta's flood victims have started to clean up their houses after water submerged parts of the Greater Jakarta area and Lebak, Banten.
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Shelter from the storm: Dozens of flood victims occupy a Transjakarta bus shelter in Jembatan Baru, West Jakarta, on Friday. Without access to a proper evacuation center, residents of the Rawa Buaya area said they were forced to use the shelter after their homes were inundated by floodwaters. (JP/Dionnasius Aditya)
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he flooding that hit parts of Greater Jakarta and Lebak, Banten may have receded and Supriyati and her husband can now go home to Jl. H. Marzuki, Kedoya Selatan, West Jakarta.
But for the elderly couple, the real work is just beginning: cleaning up the house and discarding the contents of destroyed by water that went as high as chest level.
The 62-year-old woman and 76-year-old man previously stayed in their neighbor’s house on higher land. The couple’s house is across Jl. H. Marzuki beside the Pesanggrahan River, one of 13 streams that pass through the capital city.
Locating next to a river, the area has had its fair share of flooding. Even though usually floods only went up to 30 centimeters high and the water levels did not increase so quickly as in the recent flood. “We have no choice but to live here; we don’t have the money to rent a house in a better location,” Supriyati said.
The house, made of wood and plywood with a zinc roof, consists of only two three-by-three-meter rooms. Sumadi sells plastic waste he buys from garbage pickers and earns Rp 5,000 (36 US cents) to Rp 20,000 a day. The flood also carried away some of Sumadi’s to-be-sold garbage or turned it dirtier, which decreases the quality.
Because the flood was chest high, all goods in the house including clothing were soaked. As the city administration did not drop off any clean clothes to Supriyati’s neighborhood, Supriyati still wore the same clothes she had been wearing for four days.
Supriyati’s front-side neighbors, Syafroji and wife Risti, were washing two large buckets of clothes with their hands and couple of shoes on Saturday. “We have been working for more than two days now,” the 28-year-old man, who normally works as a car driver, said.
