Plis Deh Jakarta!

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo has thumbed his nose at a Supreme Court ruling and said the city will forge ahead with a major sea reclamation project. (JG Photo/Jurnasyanto Sukarno)

Bang Foke is pushing ahead with the sea reclamation project in North Jakarta, despite environmental experts saying that it will be disastrous, and even despite blocks from the State Ministry of the Environment and the Supreme Court.

In a somewhat signature act of far-flung vision with terrible planning, the outgoing governor, Sutiyoso, launched the city water taxis in June 2007, spending Rp 200 billion on the facilities with a pilot project serving a 1.7 km route with two 28-person boats. So where is it now?

The first few trips failed when, among others, garbage got stuck in the boat’s rotors. This, and not to mention that apparently not all of Ciliwung River can be dredged to serve such a water transport service.

So Rp 200 billion and ambition = nothing happening.

Two boys sift through discarded waste floating on a river in Jakarta on Friday. (Photo: Adek Berry, Reuters) - The Jakarta Globe

So apparently, Jakarta has won 5 Adipura awards, which are awards issued for environmental awareness. All 5 Jakarta municipalities given the awards were the ones who managed to keep their areas clean, and supposedly being the greenest and cleanest in Indonesia.

Perhaps they kept the streets clean by sweeping everything into the river…

To declare their alliance for the upcoming presidential elections, the Megawati-Prabowo election team has selected the Bantar Gebang dumpsite for the location, for some sort of PR effect – I think they want to be seen as ‘close to the people’.

Yet I guess their definition of ‘leave the dumpsite as it has always been’ means setting up a huge stage and tent, placing down a walkway made of placing blocks, and so on, and is actually a few hundred meters from the actual dumpsite.

The only thing they did not try to get rid of was the smell – hopefully the smell is enough for the campaign team to not just make this into a PR event, but something to act on.

Apparently, the reason why Jakartans don’t throw their litter the right place, is because, there are no rubbish bins around. And why is this? They keep getting stolen!

Last month, the government unveiled their plan to make Jakarta flood-free by 2025.

Yipeee. What do we do for the intervening 16 years? But to give the government some credit, the plan is seemingly comprehensive… then again, I have never seen any project continued consistently for 4 years, let alone 16. I’m not even sure if they have integrated this into other grand plans i.e. overhauling the public transport network, creation of cheaper housing complexes and so on.

But hey kids, there’s always something we can do, right? Like making sure we dont litter the rivers in the first place.

There have been complaints from residents who felt their activities have been disrupted by the activty, so Jakarta’s environmental agency has cut the so-called ‘car free day’, which originally starts at 6 AM to 2 PM, 2 hours short to end at 12 PM.

Some people apparently do not get the point.

When I read the headline, I thought the term ‘smart park’ was used like it is used for ‘smart phone’, ‘smart car’ and ‘smart house’, whereas the object involved becomes ‘smart’ and can anticipate a user’s needs due to certain hardware or software. So what of ‘smart parks’? Automatic irrigation, automatic umbrellas, and when you leave the park money is automatically deducted from your bank account for parking or something? Oh, nooo.

These ‘smart parks’, or Taman Pintar, are meant to give an experience of reading outdoors to students, giving an alternative to the classroom, where reading interest is low.

This is interesting – some government officials, obviously appealed by the romaticism of relaxing in a park to read a book, just like in those American movies, made this move – where I don’t think said officials have hardly ever read a book outside in Jakarta’s daily weather, even under a tree’s shade. The scorching heat or the torrential rains, complete with air and noise pollution, wouldn’t be a very attractive place to read. Can you imagine some high school kid trying to get through a quantum physics book, sweating like a pig in the heat, or sitting under a small umbrella in a storm?

My opinion? The desire to read is actually high – but just not study material

The environmentally-friendly NGO has stated that the monthly ‘car-free’ days are a waste – of effort, I suppose – and has urged the government to halt this activity and reevaluate the actual effectiveness of the program. My take? I agree.

The car-free day only clears up certain main roads in the city, which only displaces traffic, not stop it. This is similar to the bright idea of moving school hours half an hour earlier, without really attacking the root of traffic and pollution problems – too many cars and motorcycles!

Maybe the car-free days should be extended to cover all of Jakarta, with the exception of public transport. Oh, I forget, those smoke-spewing buses are part of the problem…

A panel of experts from various agencies and organizations have convened in a conference, basically to say that Jakarta needs a new approach towards the yearly flooding. Really? You think?

Applausable as the conference is…. isn’t it just a tad too late to say we need to prevent floods, not just react to them?

Again, it’s better late than never. But try explaining that to the citizens in Kampung Melayu or Kelapa Gading.

Imagine rolling hillsides side-by-side with tea plantations, encircled by really big, posh houses, all empty. Imagine virtually only one major road connecting that area to the city, and imagine it only being filled with people on the weekends – with their cars of course, creating weekly traffic jams that aren’t even news anymore.

Done imagining? Yep, it’s Puncak. These hillsides, which are naturally supposed to be water catchment areas, are instead filled with big, empty houses owned by really rich people, and are usually empty during the week and rented out during the weekend. Talk about the needs of the few going above the needs of the many – the burst of villas in the 1980s in the Puncak area has caused unchecked development, and, yes, eventually, more water coming down the rivers to flood Jakarta because it is not absorbed enough by the plants that are still there.

So a 20-year overdue crackdown on these villas is coming. When? We don’t know yet, as finally the authorities have the smarts to not reveal the schedule. Well, at least something is being done.

… truk yang ‘anti cinta’ ini sebentar lagi hancur berantakan.

In a study that is totally serious and totally not funny, experts say that 50% of professional workers that work in office buildings suffer from “sick building syndrome”, due to various toxic chemicals inside the buildings, and other factors.

Working from home is looking more and more attractive…