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Anies' deputy hopefuls to roll up sleeves on floods
With a string of widespread floods battering Jakarta since New Year’s Eve, the city’s future deputy governor will share a great responsibility with the governor amid criticism and complaints over flood prevention and mitigation
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span>With a string of widespread floods battering Jakarta since New Year’s Eve, the city’s future deputy governor will share a great responsibility with the governor amid criticism and complaints over flood prevention and mitigation.
“They say whoever the deputy governor is going to be, Jakarta will still experience floods. What’s important now is how big their political will is [...] to address the problem,” Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) Jakarta executive board secretary Elva Fahri Qolbina said while opening a public discussion on Friday.
During the event, Gerindra executive and House of Representatives lawmaker Ahmad Riza Patria and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) official Nurmansyah Lubis both shared their game plans to accompany Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan for his remaining 2.5 years of administration.
The two have been endorsed by their respective parties at the City Council to fill in the post left vacant 1.5 years ago by then-deputy governor Sandiaga Uno. The councillors have scheduled a plenary meeting for the election to take place later this month.
The two candidates offered the same solutions of allocating more funds for flood control infrastructure and vowed to improve communication between the city and the central government.
Riza said better urban planning by promoting more green public spaces while pushing for efforts to improve the city’s drainage system would be his key measures to manage Jakarta’s floods.
“Green public spaces in Jakarta are still far from the ideal standard, which is 30 percent of a city’s total area. Meanwhile, gutters and other water channels have not been improved optimally,” Riza said.
He said to accelerate flood mitigation, the city administration should coordinate properly with the central government and that the two parties should stop debating whether river channelization or naturalization was the better option.
While the central government’s channelization project includes widening rivers and installing concrete embankments on the riversides, Anies’ naturalization project focuses on restoring the function of the rivers by taking the ecological impact into consideration.
“There are 13 rivers in Jakarta and not all of them should be [channelized] or naturalized. We must sincerely accept each other’s input and concepts and should not be glued to other countries’ success stories,” he said.
In the meantime, Nurmansyah argued that while the city budget for flood control had been insufficient, budget control under the Jakarta Water Resources Agency (SDA) offices in each administrative area had been weak.
He said this year the agency had received an allocation of Rp 1.5 trillion (US$105 million), Rp 289 billion of which had been allocated for river naturalization, Rp 600 billion for land acquisition and Rp 500 billion for reservoir preservation. The city administration has also allocated Rp 1 trillion for water management offices in five municipalities.
“The funds in each area should be maximized for regular work and it should also be well-monitored. The City Council must verify even down to the neighborhood level,” he said.
Jakarta, along with its peripheral areas, was struck by a series of massive floods in the first two months of the year. The first downpour on New Year’s Eve caused major flooding across Greater Jakarta, Banten and parts of West Java, claiming at least 67 lives and temporarily displacing hundreds of thousands of people. A flood late last month claimed at least nine lives and displaced thousands in Greater Jakarta, causing disruption aplenty in various public facilities.
Echoing Riza’s statement, Nurmansyah agreed the city had to dare to curb illegal settlements to make way for river engineering.
University of Indonesia’s biotechnology expert, Firdaus Ali, said flood water and drinking water management should be parallel in a water management system, because Jakarta’s floods might also be attributed to excessive groundwater extraction.
“Jakarta is one of the [few] cities in the world with more than 5 million people but poor water management. In theory, the city has fulfilled 62 percent of its residents’ drinking water needs, but in reality, it is only 39 percent,” Firdaus said.
Environmental economist and Think Policy cofounder Andhyta Firselly Utami said the city should focus more on how floodwater could recede quickly instead of how to avoid flooding, since it would still happen frequently because of the climate crisis.
“Indonesia is a top contributor of emissions in the world, and Jakarta is among the highest in the country. The city should encourage more energy-efficient green buildings, because the climate crisis is also a leading factor of extreme rainfall,” she said.
Nurmansyah added Jakarta would not be entirely free from flooding problems, because, while the sea level continued to rise due to the climate crisis, the city stood in lowlands and had poor drainage systems.
He said he would bring back some good concepts from previous administrations, including the giant seawall plan introduced during the gubernatorial tenure of Fauzi Bowo and sheet piles installed while President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was the governor.
