Thousands Of Flood-affected Residents In Cililitan Have Not Received Social Assistance

Flood Victims In Cililitan Have Not Received Social Assistance/ Photo: Rizky Sulistio/ VOI

JAKARTA - About 5,000 residents in RW 07, Jalan Cililitan Kecil 1, Cililitan Village, Kramat Jati District, East Jakarta, are still affected by flooding due to the overflow of the Ciliwung River since Tuesday, March 4. Until now, the affected residents have not received social assistance from the government.

Head of RT 09/07 Cililitan Village, Ahmad Baihaki, revealed that the flood submerged 13 of the 16 RTs in his area. Only RT 05, 07, and 10 were not affected by the flood. He said that the main cause of the flooding was water shipments from the Bogor area, West Java, which caused the Ciliwung River to overflow and inundate residents' settlements.

"The average cause is the delivery of water from Bogor, then there was an overflow of the Ciliwung River," said Ahmad, Wednesday, March 5.

According to Ahmad, the drainage conditions in his area are actually quite good, but the volume of water that is too large causes flooding to be unavoidable.

"Good drainage. We have a floodgate, if it doesn't exceed the floodgates, the water won't enter," he explained.

However, until now, Ahmad stated that thousands of residents affected by the flood had not received social assistance from the government. He hopes for support in the form of boats and buoys for evacuation purposes, considering that his area is sometimes difficult to reach by rescue boats.

"We don't expect flooding, but hopefully we will have a boat and especially a buoy for evacuation. Because our area is sometimes not included in evacuation assistance using boats either," he complained.

He also hopes that the flood can recede soon, although based on information from the floodgates, the water level is still quite high and is likely to recede for a longer time.

"Now I see, the condition from the information on the floodgates is still all high. So it's been a while, hopefully, it won't take up to three days to recede," he concluded.