Flood in Jakarta

Citizens of Jakarta are familiar with the flood that inundated many parts of the city every 4 to 5 years.

The causes of flood can be natural as well as human carelessness. Natural because 40% of the city's land is situated lower than the sea level, so when the rain fall very much heavier than usual they would surely be inundated.

Beside that, the flood was also caused by human carelessness whereby many citizens treated their surrounding area the way they as the pleased. They throw garages/ trashes not in bins but into the rivers, sewerage, roads etc. Although there is a by-law that prohibit throwing garbage/trashes in improper places however it does not seems to work.

Further, the municipality government has been unable to maintain the city's master plan that has been issued many ago. This can be seen from the fact that many area which are supposed to be Green Area have been turned into Hotels, Shopping Malls and Office buildings and Fuel Stations. One very clear example such improper land use transformation is in the Gelora Senayan Sport Complex, South Jakarta.

In an effort to prevent more flood the municipality government is making efforts to clean the garbage/trashes that has filled the gulf of Jakarta by employing 400 fishermen.
And in order to prevent the city's coastline from abrasion, replanting of Mangrove trees is now being carried out.
Beside that, several Green Area which have been used for Fuel Stations and other buildings are now being revitalized.

For details, please click here, here, and here.

Considering the above, I felt that the flood in Jakarta is mainly caused by human mistake & carelessness, i.e. wrongful issuance of building permits and very weak law enforcement. Therefore, the best way to prevent floods in the future would be to make sure that such mistakes are not repeated again.


Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia.