Bobby Nasution's Orders To Medan Public Works Agency: Deploy Personnel To Clean 6,825 Meters Of Drainage Every Day

Bobby Nasution (Photo via Facebook)

JAKARTA - The flood that hit the city of Medan forced Bobby Nasution to move quickly. The Mayor of Medan gave a special order to the Technical Implementation Unit (UPT) of the Public Works Agency (PU) to deploy its personnel to clean up drainage sedimentation in their respective areas.

The total length of the drainage channel that must be cleaned is 6,825 meters per day. There is no detailed explanation on the Medan City Government's official website on how the Public Works Service personnel measure each of these jobs.

However, this instruction was conveyed by Bobby Nasution before closing the Flood Management Evaluation Follow-up Meeting, Thursday, November 2 at the PKK Medan Building. It is known that the Medan Public Works Department has V UPT. The five are UPT Medan Barat, Medan Kota, Medan Selatan, Medan Timur, and Medan Utara.

"Plt Kadis PU is regulated and all UPTs are escorted so that the cleaning of the 6,825-meter-long drainage per day runs smoothly," said Bobby Nasution.

Bobby also asked the five personnel of the Public Works Department's UPT to also repair the damaged drainage. Even the sidewalk in front of the Grand Mosque is in poor condition.

"Many of those on the sides of the road have collapsed, even in the city center, many are not noticed. For example, in front of the Grand Mosque, the sidewalks have collapsed. The drainage is open, we don't know if anyone has fallen, the drainage is very dry. In the past few days, there has never been a puddle of water there. It means that the water cannot reach this drainage, it needs to be handled immediately, "said Bobby Nasution.

President Jokowi's son-in-law also reminded the sub-district head to keep assigning and escorting Public Infrastructure and Facilities Handling Officers (P3SU) to help carry out cleaning in tertiary canals. During the meeting, Bobby Nasution was flabbergasted. This is because the UPT Heads do not know the length of roads and drainage channels in their area.

“So what does UPT handle? It's possible that the Head of the UPT doesn't know where the water flow is going. How about making a good plan?” quipped Bobby Nasution.

At the beginning of the meeting, the consul and the five Heads of the UPT explained the plan for dealing with puddles in their respective areas. From the explanation, it was revealed that there were a total of 1,324 water inundation points in Medan.

In detail, as many as 239 points are located in the UPT Medan Barat area, 257 at UPT Medan Kota, 186 at UPT Medan Selatan, 175 at UPT Medan Timur, and 467 at UPT Medan Utara. In the presentation, inundation points were also categorized based on the area, height, duration, and frequency of inundation, along with the plan for handling them.

Bobby Nasution didn't just listen to the presentation. In the meeting that took place from morning to evening, Bobby also gave responses and asked for detailed explanations to find out the maturity of the planning made by the five UPTs in dealing with flooding in their respective areas.

When met by a reporter, Bobby Nasution, said that the City Government's target is to reduce inundation points. In addition, reducing the duration of inundation is also a priority.

"We are trying to reduce the number of inundation points, although not all points can be reduced, but the intensity, duration of inundation. That's what I saw earlier. There are five hours, even up to 8 hours. We want a minimum of 8 hours of inundation to disappear," he said.