Pramono's criticism of weather modification, PAN DKI: Waste of money 

Floods hit RT 13/RW 04 Kebon Pala, Kampung Melayu, East Jakarta, Thursday (29/1/2026). (ANTARA/Siti Nurhaliza).

JAKARTA - Member of the PAN Faction of the DKI Jakarta DPRD, Lukmanul Hakim, criticized the implementation of weather modification operations (OMC) which are routinely carried out by the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government to face high rainfall.

According to him, the policy does not touch the root of the problem of flooding in Jakarta. Lukmanul assessed that OMC actually spent a large budget without significant results in the long term.

"Well (weather modification operations) it's just a waste of money. It's not very interesting either. Why should OMC? Even though it costs a lot of money," Lukmanul told reporters, Thursday, January 29.

He said that Jakarta actually had enough basic infrastructure to handle floods, such as water pumps. However, these efforts will not be effective if the underlying problems are not addressed.

According to Lukmanul, the main source of flooding problems in Jakarta lies in the destruction of the spatial layout and the weak implementation of environmental impact analysis (amdal). He assessed that the development of residential and commercial areas often ignored the function of water channels and the surrounding environment.

He highlighted the many housing and apartment clusters that were built without considering the carrying capacity of the environment. As a result, the surrounding area is actually affected by flooding.

"The problem of flooding in DKI is due to the destruction of the spatial layout. The DKI government only budgeted too much money for flooding but the completion was not complete," said Lukmanul.

"What must be improved is the overall spatial layout and its amdal. Not only in the large channels and rivers, but those in the environment, drainage, that is the most important," he added.

Lukmanul assessed that the approach to handling floods in Jakarta so far tends to be reactive and repeated every year, without thorough improvements to the city's spatial system. Considering that the problems of flooding and congestion are classic Jakarta problems that continue to recur because they have never been solved from the root.

"The problem today is every year and every period, it's a flood and traffic jam problem. Because the spatial and spatial planning is complicated, so the flood and spatial planning problem, what is it called, the traffic jam has not been solved in Jakarta," he said.

As previously reported, DKI Jakarta Governor Pramono Anung decided to extend the implementation of weather modification operations for one full month. This policy was taken following the potential for high rainfall that is still lurking in Jakarta and the surrounding areas until early February.

"The DKI Jakarta Government together with the DKI Jakarta DPRD has indeed allocated for a full month of its budget. So if it is still needed, we will conduct OMC," said Pramono in North Jakarta, Tuesday, January 27.

The implementation of OMC itself has started since mid-January and was previously extended until January 27. According to Pramono, the impact of the operation is quite felt on the weather conditions in Jakarta.

"If this morning at 7.00 am we did not raise the OMC, the weather would be different from what we feel at this time," he said.

The DKI Provincial Government, continued Pramono, continues to monitor weather developments based on data from the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG). From the results of the monitoring, OMC is still considered relevant to be carried out until early February.

"The results of BMKG are that now there is a possibility that by February 1 the weather should be done with OMC," said Pramono.