New Weapon To Anticipate Jakarta Floods In The Form Of Toa Speakers

Flood at the beginning of the year which caused a lot of losses (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - DKI Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan is thinking of new weapons to anticipate future floods. The new weapon is in the form of a toa or a loudspeaker.

So when there was information about extreme weather that hit Jakarta again. Each sub-district will deploy its staff to go around directly to residents' houses and announce the notification through loudspeakers.

"One of the things that will be implemented is, if there is news (of a flood), the sub-district will immediately go around giving information to residents, not through the RW and RT levels," said Anies at City Hall, Central Jakarta, Wednesday, January 8.

The efforts that will be carried out are expected to reduce the impact of material losses to residents such as the floods earlier this year. According to Anies, some residents were unable to save their belongings due to the rapidly rising floods after the New Year's Eve celebrations.

"Yesterday that night there was actually a notification. But, because he informed him at night via cellphone, eventually some did not get the information," he said.

Furthermore, Anies explained that extreme weather early warning notifications were obtained from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG). The notification is conveyed one channel to the DKI Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD), to be anticipated by all levels of the DKI Provincial Government, from each administrative city to the village level.

"To anticipate this, we will build posts up to the village level. So, our urban village has human resources who will immediately respond when inundation (flooding) occurs," explained Anies.

Anies' Zero Run Off idea

An old video belonging to the Governor of DKI Jakarta, Anies Baswedan, which reveals his idea of dealing with floods, has again gone viral on social media. The video footage of Anies was uploaded by the doctor and musician, Tompi.

Through the @dr_tompi account, he uploaded an old video clip of Anies while appearing at the CNBC Conference on July 22, 2019. In the video, Anies discusses Water Security & Sustainability with Zero Run Off which can be a solution for handling floods in the Capital City.

Those that haven't been created yet, can start immediately pic.twitter.com/6od8cZB0hD

- tompi (@dr_tompi) January 7, 2020

Zero Run Off is considered to be able to control the volume of water when it rains, so as to prevent flooding. You do this by making water absorption holes as deep as 25 meters to flow the puddles into the ground.

This program is believed to be able to prevent rainwater from stagnating and causing flooding. Anies Baswedan explained that in the future there will be as many as 1.8 million water absorption holes that will be made in Jakarta to deal with flood problems. Furthermore, according to Anies Baswedan, this method has been used in several government offices in DKI Jakarta.