Neighbors say education key to solving waste problem

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With Jakarta's waste beginning to mountain in decreasing landfill spaces, officials attending the recent National Sanitation Conference in Balai Kartini, South Jakarta, urged the city administration to fix its waste management system.

Djarot Syaiful Hidayat, mayor of Blitar in East Java, told The Jakarta Post the only way to restore beauty to Jakarta was through a major campaign.

"I am deeply, deeply concerned about the city's waste problem. I think the city administration needs to hold a massive campaign to improve sanitation," he said.

Hidayat said that after the campaign, the government must maintain sanitation awareness by providing waste management facilities. He said this could be achieved through joint efforts between the community and the private sector.

"They need to educate residents on separating organic and non-organic waste -- like we do in Blitar."

Blitar is a city on Indonesia's Sanitation Sector Development Program (ISSDP), along with Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan, Denpasar in Bali, Jambi and Payakumbuh in Sumatra, and Surakarta in Central Java, all of which signed the Blitar Declaration aimed to accelerate urban sanitation development.

He said his city managed to maintain sanitation through its Thorough Waste-treatment Installations which turn organic waste into compost.

"This is achieved with help from housewives, who separate organic and non-organic trash,"

"We simply provide garbage bins, which are routinely emptied ... and different colored trash bags for different types of waste."

Jerry P. Trenas, mayor of Iloilo in The Philippines, also attended the conference and also said education was the key to making the city a more sanitary place.

"We also have informal settlers on riverbanks and people throwing garbage indiscriminately, but we have allocated 1 billion Philippine pesos (some US$23 million) to our sanitation program.

"This includes education on sanitary households and the development of sanitary landfills," he said, adding that his administration received no subsidy from the Philippines government for waste management.

A sanitary landfill is a site where waste is isolated until it has completely degraded -- biologically, chemically and physically, to reduce the impact of its disposal on the environment.

IloIlo, which has a population of more then 360,000, is set to be The Philippines' first province to have a sanitary landfill -- by the last quarter of 2008.

"But the most important thing is to make sure people are educated enough so they help clean the city, and keep it that way," he said. (anw)