Jakarta – The Cakung sluice gate in East Jakarta provides Ari Syarifuddin with a steady income on a daily basis due to the amount of trash it catches. "You may look at this as trash, but I see it as money," he said.
Ari and several of his workers push up to three meters of trash off the sluice gate at any one time, sending it downstream to a reservoir where it is moved into a truck by a crane and transported to a dump site.
At times the part of the river directly before the sluice gate looks more like land, with styrofoam, bicycle helmets, plastic bottles, broken tree branches and chemical waste, among other items of trash, clogging it up.
"No wonder it always floods here. The amount of trash at this gate is not just bad, it's super bad," Ari said.
Massive buildups of waste are quickly reducing the size and depth of rivers in the capital, especially near their sluice gates.
Some 93 sluice gates have been constructed in 34 locations throughout Jakarta's river network. Some gates were built in the 1920s by the Dutch administration, including the Manggarai and Karet sluice gates in Central Jakarta.
The Manggarai sluice has the largest amount of trash piled at its gates out of all sluices in the city. Debris, including pieces of wood, cardboard boxes and other heavy objects regularly lodge in its gates, causing mountains of waste to form each day.
Manggarai sluice gate operator Parjono said four loads of 18 tons of trash were carried off to the city's dump every day from the area. "After the floods in February this year, we had to transport 40 truckloads of debris to the dump. That was one heck of a day," he said.
In February, floods inundated at least 70 percent of Jakarta, claiming 48 lives and causing around Rp 12 trillion (US$ 1.3 Billion) in damage.
Trash is not the only problem plaguing Jakarta's sluices. Many sluice gates in the city do not function properly as they are too old or poorly maintained.
Hassan, who has been a sluice gate operator in Sunter, North Jakarta, since 1963, said the city administration was no longer concerned with gate no. 8. "The gate can't be closed because some of its gears are missing. Even the operator post has been abandoned," he said.
The head of the water resources and beach development division at the Jakarta Public Works Agency, I Gde Nyoman Soeandhi, said all Sunter sluice gates were still being regularly maintained. "We make sure they work by occasionally coming and moving the gates up and down," he told the Post.
He said gate no. 8 was originally built to regulate irrigation to areas such as Kelapa Gading, but now the agency kept it open at all times. Kelapa Gading was a water catchment area before it was transformed into a bustling residential and commercial district. (anw)