DAILY UMMAT ■ West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil who is also the Task Force for Citarum Harum said that the COVID-19 pandemic has a good impact on the condition of the Citarum River. So far, from the reports he has received, it is known that waste pollution in the Citarum watershed has decreased.
"COVID-19 actually has a good impact on pollution as well because the amount of waste has decreased," he said when he was a resource person for the West Java IATPI webinar at the Pakuan Building, Bandung, yesterday.
However, garbage, especially those originating from households, is still found, but the volume is much smaller than it was before COVID-19.
"Today, waste, especially household waste, is still there, but compared to before, the volume of waste has decreased significantly," said Ridwan Kamil.
He explained that in 2019 the handling of waste piles reached 46 percent. While the target until the end of 2020 could reach 70 percent.
"In 2019, 46% of unmanaged waste piles are handled, this year's target is more than half of it and so on until 2025. We hope that the handling and management of waste in the Citarum watershed can be fully managed by the system," Emil said.
According to him, COVID-19 allows the environment to perform self-healing. "Maybe COVID-19 is the environment's way of rebooting itself," he said.
Apart from household waste, another major problem in the Citarum watershed is factory waste. Since the issuance of Presidential Decree Number 15 of 2018 concerning the Acceleration of Pollution Control and Damage to the Citarum Watershed, 165 cases of pollution have been processed by law.
According to Emil, the majority of parties who were sued in court were corporations that enjoyed law enforcement vacancies because entrepreneurs were looking for low costs in waste management. The simplest way is to throw it into Citarum.
"Law enforcement has never occurred before the establishment of the Citarum Harum Task Force. The 165 cases were mostly corporations or industries that disposed of waste to Citarum," he said.
The West Java Provincial Government is currently focusing on restoring upstream areas such as mountains and hills which are in critical condition. One of which has been carried out is the movement to plant 50 million trees that started last year. In almost a year, the tree planting movement has realized as many as 19 million trees.
"The bare hills indicate that environmental problems are important things that we have to find a solution for, including the management of the Citarum watershed," he explained.
Emil hopes that by the end of Perpres 15, in 2025 all problems in the Citarum watershed can be managed. Then from the budget side, the handling of Citarum is carried out collaboratively, including support from the World Bank, APBN, Provincial and district / city APBD with a total of around IDR 11.358 trillion by the end of 2025.
"We are undertaking various initiatives that the handling of Citarum can be done collaboratively. So if we hope that this Citarum can be resolved by itself without major action, I think it is unrealistic but it requires funds that are not cheap," Emil concluded. (Hms/Red)