Poor sanitation worsens urban, health problems

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

As a city riddled with sanitation-related diseases such as diarrhea and dengue fever, the Jakarta administration needs to start working with the public, private companies and non-governmental organizations to build a better sanitation system, an expert has said.

According to Basah Hernowo, head of community housing at the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas), Jakarta has the money and can afford the technology to provide proper sanitation to its residents by 2015 as targeted in the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

"What lacking is the will," he said.

"What they should do is fund NGOs so they can help educate the public about sanitation and then work with the private sector to build proper sanitation systems, like a sewerage system."

With virtually no sewerage system or waste treatment plants, most of Jakarta's liquid waste is left to flow downriver to the sea or is kept in septic tanks.

There are more than a million septic tanks in Jakarta, which has a population of almost 10 million people.

"And if they still say that they can't (put a sanitation system in place), then what reasons left are there?" he asked during the recent National Sanitation Conference.

The conference brought together more than a hundred experts and officials from all over Indonesia and the world to discuss possible solutions to the country's sanitation problems in anticipation of 2008, which has been declared the Year of Sanitation by the United Nations.

One of the UN's related resolutions is to reach 73 percent public access to sanitation by 2015.

Basah said the people who showed up to the conference were concerned about the environment and those who didn't were indifferent to the problem.

"What the city needs to realize is that sanitation is one of the main causes of poverty. Sick people, especially those with a daily income, can not make money to get themselves out of their situation. It's no wonder there are so many poor people in Jakarta," he added.

According to the 2004 National Social Economic Survey, 12 percent of the population in Indonesia's bigger cities does not have access to toilets. A third of those who have access use facilities that are not connected to septic tanks or equipped with water faucets, located instead on rivers.

Around 70 percent of the water in Indonesia's cities is contaminated with domestic waste, with 78 percent of Jakarta's river deemed polluted as of 2006, according to data provided by the administration.

The water is contaminated with E. coli bacteria and other harmful organisms that can cause diarrhea, dengue fever and typhoid.

Diarrhea kills more than 100,000 children every year in Indonesia. As of July, more than 11,000 diarrhea cases have been recorded, attributed to the prevailing unhealthy lifestyle and poor sanitation. In some areas, the disease is so common that it is classified as an "extraordinary occurrence".

Dengue fever is also an ongoing problem in Jakarta with more 29,000 cases and 81 deaths reported this year. April has been the worst month so far, with 5,133 cases reported.(anw)