Citarum River Clean Up Focusing on Waste Water Installation

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citarum river
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Jakarta (Greeners) – A senior official of Coordinating Ministry of Maritime, said on Thursday (06/09/2018) that as 90 to 95 percent of domestic waste of Citarum river has been cleaned up, it will be focusing on drilling industrial waste water pipes, in Jakarta.

“In Citarum river, there is 90 to 95 percent of domestic waste had been cleaned up. No more plastic bottles and food packaging. Waste only appears again during rain season and those were the ones from the land,” said Safri Burhannudin of Coordinating Ministry of Maritime affairs.

Furthermore, Burhanuddin said that the next focus is to clean Citarum’s black water.

Previously, Coordinating Minister of Maritime, Luhut Pandjaitan, said that he will enforce industries polluting Citarum river. However, Burhanuddin said that there are challenges because no industries would want to be responsible of the waste in Citarum river.

“We are drilling onto 100 waste pipes of industries because no one wants to admit it. Once we drilled, we will get to know which belong to who. Sometimes not all has to do with law but it needs to have a strict action,” he said.

READ ALSO: KLHK Signs Agreement with Districts to Support Citarum Bersih Program 

After the drilling, there were 70 companies admitted to polluting and improved their waste water installations. The companies were not being legally charged but only creating awareness.

“From 100 pipes, there were 70 opened up because they reported and started to fix their pipes. They also commit to build waste water installation,” he said.

The remaining 30 pipes were still in progress. In the future, they will built communal waste water installation for each industry. They will all pay for the costs.

READ ALSO: KLHK Allocates 12 billion for Citarum River Waste Management 

Meanwhile, Minister Luhut instructed industries to install communal waste water management. West Java governor is thinking to relocate its industry to areas more save for its waste water installation.

“I have meet with business people, we need to follow the rules. The impacts as being shown by the governor, there are 340,000 tons of industrial waste entered Citarum river. That’s just from industrial waste. There are 30 millions of people living in the riverbanks, where would we move them? Their offspring can experience health issue. I have just received reports from IPB that fishes are not save for human consumption,” he said.

Haeru Rahayu of Education and Maritime Training at the ministry, said that the communal waste water system will be divided into upper and lower industrial levels. The upper level can built a communal waste water, meanwhile the lower part can have at least five communal waste water installations.

“There is actually one communal waste water installation and it is not working. So, from the thousands industries, at least 500 communal waste water installations. We need to work harder,” he said.

Reports by Dewi Purningsih

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