Jakarta City Council's Commission D held meeting together with Water Resource Agency to discuss flood handling.

to anticipate and prevent flood better

Jakarta City Council's Commission D Chairwoman, Yuke Yurike appealed the agency to intensify the flood handling. It is not new problem in Jakarta.

"The agency needs to refer to previous experience and planning to anticipate and prevent flood better through appropriate mitigation," she said, Wednesday (2/5).

Yuke hopes the allocated budget for the agency can be used to intensify the planned flood handling.

Yuke admitted flood is upstream to downstream problem. Thus it needs to be run in stages.

According to her, the constructed 38 polders have not optimmal in handling the flood. It is because the field condition is not appropriate with the planning.

"They might created the plan well, but the location or land procurement was not as easy as we thought," she admitted.

Meanwhile, Jakarta Water Resource Agency's Secretary, Hendri, explained his side has run the efforts of flood handling such as routine dredging, infrastructure improvement, and pump maintenance.

"We already have flood handling procedure. The pumps are also well mantained. In fact, high rainfall still becomes another challenge," he explained.

For this year, he added, the agency focues in constructing polder, dredging river, and normalizing river.

The agency targets to complete 70 polders construction in 2045. At this moment, 14 polders have been adequately constructed, 38 polders have not been adequately constructed, and 18 polders have not been constructed.

Responded the 38 polders that have not been adequately constructed, Hendri admitted that his side meets land procurement problem.

"We have mockups for those 38 polders, but the drainage heading to polders have not yet based on our planning," he admitted.