Heavy pollution of river water by household
and industrial waste in the Indonesian province of West Java is threatening the
health of at least five million people living on the riverbanks, say government
officials and water experts.
Poor
sanitation and hygiene cause 50,000 deaths annually in Indonesia, with
untreated sewage resulting in over six million tons of human waste being
released into inland water bodies, according to an ongoing study by the World
Bank.
Ibu
Sutria, 53, lives in a wooden shack on the banks of West Java’s Krukut River,
which runs approximately 20km south from the capital, Jakarta, to the city of
Depok.
“Sometimes
the river is clean, sometimes it’s dirty,” she said.
Sutria
suffers from regular bouts of stomach ache and diarrhea, and says the river is
constantly flooded.
“People
use the river for a toilet and children play in it because they have nowhere
else to swim,” Sutria said.
She and
others in her community use nearby ground water to wash themselves because they
think it is cleaner than river water.
Pak
Jumari, 35, is a leader of a community group living along the Ciliwung River,
which runs north for 97km from the West Java city of Bogor. Since 2010 he has
been using a boat to keep his own section of the Ciliwung clean by scooping out
rubbish.
“We
find many detergents and soaps in the river, “he said. “We no longer use it for
washing or drinking.”
Fishermen
on the Ciliwung use “blast fishing” — bombs made of kerosene and fertilizer to
kill fish so they are easier to catch — which has worsened pollution.
Nevertheless, his community still fishes in the river, with few reported ill
effects, he said.
Reasons for pollution
The
Deputy Minister of the Indonesian Environment Ministry, Hendri Bastaman, told
IRIN that pollution in West Java’s rivers is worsening, particularly in the
Ciliwung and Citarum, where five million people live along the riverbanks.
“Much
of the waste is dumped into rivers from households,” said Bastaman. “People are
using these rivers as personal toilets. We’ve also found mercury in river
water, which we suspect is coming from companies or those running small-scale
mining activities close to the rivers.”
Health risks
Muhammad
Rez Sahib, advocacy coordinator of KRuHA, a Jakarta-based coalition of more
than 30 Indonesian NGOs focusing on safe water access, said none of the
capital’s rivers could be viewed as safe for human use.
“Even
the water suppliers in Jakarta don’t use the water here because it is so
polluted,” he said. “Instead, they use water from the Citarum River, which is
also heavily polluted. Even after this water is treated it’s still unsafe to
drink.”
The
Citarum flows north from Bandung, the capital of West Java, for approximately
300km to the Java Sea.
Safe
water alternatives for poor communities are “few and far between” Sahib noted.
“Many
will turn to use ground water, but due to a poor sewage system and open
defecation, 90 percent of ground water in Jakarta is contaminated by E.coli
bacteria,” he said. “Many infant deaths are caused by this bacteria — E.coli is
the main threat to human life from these rivers.”
Edward
Carwardine, spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Indonesia,
noted that in West Java the use of “improved water” — obtained from taps,
boreholes, covered wells and springs — falls below the national average, with
only half of the population (approximately 20 million) able to access it.
“When
families don’t have access to improved water sources, disease is much more
likely,” said Carwardine. “Nearly a quarter of all deaths amongst children
under five in Indonesia are caused by diarrheal disease.”
The
World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that nationwide more than 20,000
children in this age group die every year from diarrhea.
Dengue
fever and malaria, both spread by mosquitoes that thrive in stagnant water,
account for an additional 3 percent of overall child deaths, according to
Carwardine, who said more focus is needed to end the widespread practice of
defecating in the open.
The
Environment Ministry’s Bastaman said the government is using educational
campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of unsafe water and to end defecation
in rivers.
“For
the Ciliwung we have a 10-year plan to restore the river’s health,” said
Bastaman. “But for the Citarum, it’s impossible to get it back to the way it
was prior to being polluted. The pollution is just too much.”
IRIN
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