It should go without saying that, no matter what preventative measures the government builds to keep Jakarta from flooding, it will all be for nothing if the citizens don’t play their part in keeping the city clean, particularly its drains.
Yesterday, we saw the most widespread flooding in the capital for about two years, which many would say was caused by a prolonged period of heavy rainfall.
But we can’t help thinking that much of the flooding in Jakarta could be avoided if we had all learnt our lesson from previous floods. Specifically, that litter can quickly clog up drains, which are obviously essential to getting water off the streets and preventing flooding.
But it seems many Jakartans remain ignorant of that basic fact, or simply do not care, as a couple of viral videos have emerged showing just how badly clogged some of our drains are. So bad, in fact, that some of brave souls in our city’s sanitation department have to dive into pools of shit (quite literally) to unclog drains from litter.
Jangan buang sampah sembarangan pic.twitter.com/qdqzIWfHMK
— Andrew Darwis (@adarwis) February 22, 2017
As horrifying as it is that somebody has to do such an unimaginably unpleasant job (which we respect them immensely for doing) it’s at least reassuring to see that both videos have gone viral on social media, with the first one in particular having been viewed over one million times and shared over 25 thousand times in less than 24 hours. Perhaps some people care about keeping Jakarta clean after all.
But sharing that video isn’t going to help unless it convinces people to stop littering, and convinces them to try and convince others to stop littering as well. Otherwise these low-income sanitation workers (who, in both videos, aren’t even equipped with basic protective equipment such as goggles when they dived into the black, murky water) will have to keep doing our dirty work for us.
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