Illegal settlement built along the Ciliwung River
When most Jakartans think about the Ciliwung River, they imagine a smelly, garbage filled body of water surrounded by rickety slum buildings. But parts of the Ciliwung in Jakarta are actually relatively clean and surrounded by forests, thanks to the work of Ciliwung Condet conservation community in Condet, East Jakarta.
Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama also envisions a future in which the whole Ciliwung River is clean, surrounded by greenery and a popular tourist attraction that all Jakartans to enjoy.
To help make this dream into a reality, Ahok met with members of the Ciliwung Condet Community at City Hall today to discuss how the river could be cleaned up and turned into an actual asset for the city.
“Actually, the Ciliwung could be like a treasure in the middle of the city, uf we could make it nice and green upstream from Condet. We can work with Bogor and Cianjur [also to make this happen],” Ahok said, as quoted by Detik.
Ahok said one example of how the Ciliwung could become a tourist attraction would be if the city could revitalize Villa Nova, a formerly grand Dutch colonial building which has been left in disuse since a fire in the 1980s gutted it.
The governor acknowledged that one of the toughest tasks for the government in transforming the river would be taking control of land along the length of the river, much of which is now covered with illegal settlements. Ahok said such settlements would have to be moved anyways since they were not built legally and contribute to the city’s sanitation and flooding problems.
