In Jakarta, flood-hit slum residents aim for a drier future

JAKARTA: Whenever floods hit her one-room shack in northern Jakarta, Irma Susanti hangs her most precious furniture - a bed and a table - from the ceiling with a rope. “You can never be too prepared,” says the resident of Muara Angke, a coastal area in Jakarta. In July alone heavy rains flooded her home up to knee level, she said.

“But that wasn’t the worst - once, the water was up to our necks and destroyed all the food, clothes, everything,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, mimicking the action of waves with her arm. Jakarta, a coastal city built on a swampy plain, faces no end of flood worries, not least because roughly 40 percent of its land sits below sea level. Increases in sea level and regular floods from heavy rain and monsoons, combined with crumbling infrastructure to cope with excess water, mean the city’s slumdwellers often face the brunt of water problems, experts say.

But an effort by the city to rehouse some of the city’s threatened poor in low-cost but flood-resilient buildings is winning converts, not least among flood-battered slumdwellers. “Residents in informal settlements along the riverbank, like (in) Muara Angke, are most at risk of flooding,” said Nyoman Prayoga, flood resilience program manager at charity Mercy Corps Indonesia. “Not only are they exposed to sea-level rise, they also have to deal with the drainage system being clogged up with trash, which makes the flooding worse,” he added.

The Indonesian government is trying to address the growing problem by demolishing homes in flood-prone areas like Muara Angke to make way for new, affordable housing, said Muhammed Andri, head of the Penjaringan district in northern Jakarta. “Four years ago, 90 percent of the district was flooded, and people’s homes and belongings destroyed,” the official said. “Since then we’ve relocated 1,200 families to new low-cost buildings in the area.”