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Lunch, but no cigarettes

Severe floods left Jakarta’s urban slum communities battling mounds of contaminated waste. Jane Bean describes the challenges of negotiating narrow laneways, toxic mud and demanding soldiers in the race to prevent disease.


Oxfam has involved flood-affected men and women in Jarkarta, Indonesia, in cash-for-work programs to clear waste and debris from urban slum communities. Photo: Jane Bean/OxfamAUS.

When unprecedented monsoonal rains flooded large parts of Jakarta, in Indonesia, in January, the city was caught largely unawares. Jakarta’s main river, the highly toxic Ciliwung, quickly burst it banks, sweeping away much of the city’s flood prevention structures and leaving more than 500,000 people homeless. Among the hardest hit were the city’s poorest slum dwellers who live closest to the river’s banks.

The slums comprise tiny doll-like, crowded houses built from whatever material can be found — cardboard, plywood, tin, plastic and even flattened tin cans. The narrow cement laneways are like labyrinths, health services are a luxury and toilets are small, dirty and hang over the river.

During the initial flooding many lives, homes and livelihoods were lost. The urban poor fled in panic to squat in the only available dry urban spaces — the no man’s land under the huge freeways, traffic islands and building sites. They lived there while the waters receded and then returned to their communities.

After the flood, Oxfam carried out an assessment in 131 of the poorest urban slum communities. Many areas remained under water, houses were coated inside and out with toxic mud, the ground was like quicksand and human sewage, animal carcasses, household goods and furniture floated around people’s feet.

To make matters worse, the rats had moved in and all the bottles, tyres and cans provided ideal mosquito breeding sites, resulting in outbreaks of dengue fever and rat-borne leptospirosis — a disease caused by contact with water contaminated by infected rats’ urine.

To prevent further outbreaks of disease, Oxfam initiated a solid waste management project — a project that encountered many challenges, which required many innovative solutions.

The tiny, narrow laneways meant that manual labour, rather than machinery, was the only option to clear away rubbish. The communities formed solid waste management teams which were supplied with protective gear, wheelbarrows and tools. Oxfam gave each worker a meal and one day’s wages.

The logistics around transport were mind-boggling. The community teams were able to move the waste manually to an accessible location, from where Oxfam’s small backhoe could load it on trucks for removal. But that only posed more questions. How do we move the very slow backhoe from site to site in a city choked by traffic? Where is the shortest route between slums whose only cardinal reference is a winding river?

Then there were the negotiations with the Government Taskforce, comprising the military and the local government, which was mandated to approve all projects. To finish cleaning up the slums, we needed the taskforce’s support and government trucks to remove the rubbish.

The subsequent negotiations were difficult. To negotiate effectively we learnt to combine neutrality, respect and humour. The taskforce demanded protective gear, food and wages for its soldiers. We countered that the Indonesian army was one of the best equipped in the world and had a much bigger budget than ours. After two days’ negotiations we agreed that we would provide lunches for the soldiers who worked on the day.

As we shook hands, the General made one last demand — could we provide the soldiers with cigarettes? I responded that, like all professional people, I had a code of honour. “Mine is based in public health principles,” I said to him, “So regrettably the only possible answer is no.”

Jane Bean is Oxfam Australia’s Public Health Technical Adviser and was part of the Oxfam International response team in Jakarta after the floods.