96% of Jakarta has no sewage system

Only 4% of Jakarta has access to a proper sewage drainage and treatment system, the city’s head of planning has revealed. The remaining 96% - or over 9.2 million people - live without a wastewater system.

Waste from their households are disposed in open drains and are disposed untreated.

The government plans to build a US$6.8 billion wastewater treatment system covering the whole of Jakarta by 2022, said Tuty Kusumawati, head of Jakarta’s Regional Development Planning Board.

It is unable to fund this on its own, however. The government wants to partner with private sector companies to finance and build the system.

“We are encouraging private sector through our local government-owned enterprises to run and develop infrastructure”, she said.

“If investors are interested to developed, they can start investigating whether it is profitable for them or not,” she added. Image by BxHxTxCx, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0