Indonesia assigns 26,500 officials to anticipate flooding in Jakarta

Jakarta Post (Indonesia): The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) has allocated 26,553 officials to anticipate the possibility of a major flood in Jakarta this rainy season.

BNPB spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said it was very difficult to deal with flooding in Jakarta as it was a complex problem that required cooperation between the government, businesspeople and the community to cope with.

“Flooding is still ongoing despite the prevention efforts that have been ongoing since the 1960s,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday via Blackberry messenger.

He said that the capacity of the 13 rivers in Jakarta to drain water from the capital ranged from 17 to 80 percent of normal, because the rivers were polluted and full of silt. Sutopo said that the flow of water from upland areas into Jakarta's rivers had increased by about 50 percent over the past 30 years....

An 1897 map of Jakarta