Pepen Mayor Must Hear! Residents Of Kayuringin Jaya Bekasi Angry About The Becakayu Toll Water Distribution Crossing Project That Makes Floods Worse

JAKARTA - Sunday morning, November 7, in the courtyard of the Al Muhajirin Mosque in the Kayuringin Jaya area, Perumnas 2 South Bekasi looks unusual. This morning at around 09.00 WIB, hundreds of residents were seen gathering and giving speeches to reiterate their rejection of the water distribution project from the Becakayu Toll crossing duplication project and the West Tarum Channel to the Bumi Satria Kencana (BSK) River.

This action was carried out by residents of RW 13 and RW 11 Kayuringin Jaya. In an orderly action, residents rejected the water distribution project because it risked causing more severe flooding in their settlements.

This is because the Kayuringin Jaya area has always been subject to flooding with a height of up to 2 meters. This flood has always inundated 10 RWs in the Kayuringin Jaya Village area.

The chairman of RT 02 RW 13 Kayurungin Jaya, Arif Nur Hidayat, said that more concrete steps were needed from the residents so that the water distribution project could at least be stopped and re-analyzed by the Bekasi City Government led by Rahmat 'Pepen' Effendi. The reason is that so far residents have not received clear information about the Environmental Impact Analysis (Amdal) related to the project.

"We strongly reject this water distribution project. The best step we can take at this time may be class action. We will file a lawsuit. The AMDAL is considered legally flawed," Arif said in his speech in front of the residents.

Basically, continued Arif, residents do not reject projects built by the government. However, what the residents refused was the distribution of the waste water to the natural river, namely the Bumi Satria Kencana (BSK) river.

Meanwhile, one of the residents named Yohana Tomi expressed her complaint about the condition of her residence which is relatively prone to flooding. According to him, it is increasingly visible that the Bekasi city government wants to "flow" the flood into the Kayuringin Jaya area, especially with the presence of the water distribution project from the Becakayu Toll crossing duplication project and the West Tarum Channel to the BSK River.

"We are already bored. We only reject the flood, not reject government projects. So far we don't know what the AMDAL is like. I've been living here since 1984 and in recent years the flooding has become increasingly troubling," Yohana told reporters.

It is known that the Bekasi City Government through the Mayor of Bekasi Rahmat Effendi has approved the normalization and revitalization of Kalijati and Kali BSK to be a priority scale program, but in its implementation, the duplication of the toll crossing and Tarum Barat project as well as the construction of the Becakayu Toll Road crossing drain is carried out first.

Previously, Head of the Bekasi City Highways and Water Resources Office Arief Maulana said that he had submitted a number of proposals to the Bekasi City government, one of which was normalization and embankment but the proposals received were duplicate toll crossings.

"From the proposals we gave, only one was approved, namely the prioritized toll crossings," he said in early October 2021, as reported by Antara.

Arief admitted that he would continue to push for the normalization and revitalization of Kalijati and Kali BSK as well as asking local kelurahan officials to map land ownership along the riverbanks to ensure state-owned and individual land so that development can run smoothly.

"There are many building violations that are above or along river lines and canal walls. We have done a mapping by segment and there are six segments based on the width of the BSK River channel. Because this toll crossing is a grant fund, if it is not implemented, we will have difficulty getting a budget of Rp40 billion, " he said.

Bekasi City DPRD chairman Choiruman Putro said what was voiced by the BSK RW Forum and Kayuringin Jaya, indeed, until now no one has felt responsible for the maintenance of toll crossings.

The Bekasi City DPRD has actually made regional regulation number 2 of 2020 regarding the drainage system and even admitted that there was a budget of Rp. 4 trillion that the central government had prepared to fix rivers in Bekasi Regency and City.

"The problem here is that it has not been integrated and integrated, so we decided to make a regional regulation which is expected to solve the flood problem," said Chairman of the Bekasi City DPRD Choiruman Putro.