WHENEVER floods hit her one-room shack in northern Jakarta, Irma Susanti will hang her most precious furniture — a bed and a table — from the ceiling with a rope.
“You can never be too prepared,” says the resident of Muara Angke, a coastal area of the Indonesian capital.
In July, heavy rains flooded her home up to knee level, she said.
“But that wasn’t the worst. Once, the water was up to our necks and it destroyed our food, clothes... everything,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation while mimicking the action of waves with her arm.
Jakarta, a coastal city built on a swampy plain, faces no end to flood worries, not least because about 40 per cent of it is below sea level.
Increase in sea level and floods from heavy rains and monsoons, combined with a crumbling infrastructure to cope with excess water, mean the city’s slum dwellers often face the brunt of water problems, experts say.
But an effort by the city to rehouse some of its threatened poor in low-cost, but flood-resilient buildings is winning converts, not least among flood-battered slum dwellers.
“Residents in informal settlements along the riverbank, like (in) Muara Angke, are most at risk of flooding,” said Nyoman Prayoga, a flood-resilience programme manager at charity Mercy Corps Indonesia.
“Not only are they exposed to sea-level rise, they also have to deal with the drainage system being clogged up with trash, which makes the flooding worse.”
The Indonesian government is trying to address the growing problem by demolishing homes in flood-prone areas like Muara Angke to make way for affordable housing, said Muhammed Andri, head of the Penjaringan district in the northern part of the city.
“Four years ago, 90 per cent of the district was flooded, and people’s homes and belongings were destroyed,” the official said.
“Since then, we’ve relocated 1,200 families to new low-cost buildings in the area.”
Muhammed said residents paid the state about 250,000 Indonesian rupiah (RM75) in rent each month that included water and electricity supplies.
In Muara Angke, ramshackle homes made of plastic, tin and cardboard line the muddy streets, with dozens of garbage bags piling up at every corner.
Norma, a stern-looking street vendor who sells sweets and plastic toys on a couple of wooden boxes, has lived here her whole life.
On a good day, she can make up to 50,000 rupiah selling her goods. But, heavy rain often “scares customers off and destroys my sweets”, she said, waving her pair of flip-flops in the air to dry them.
A widow, she hopes to move with her six children into one of the “big buildings” built by the government nearby, so that she has a place to store her goods when it rains, saving her a 30-minute walk home in the rain.
Susanti thinks her family may be next on the list of candidates for affordable housing.
“Other residents have told me homes in the area would soon be destroyed to make way for new building work. If this means we can move there, they can destroy everything,” she said, gazing at the grey and yellow buildings across the street.
Muhammed said the rehousing effort had proven popular with flood-threatened residents.
“At first, many were hesitant to move as they were used to living on land, not in buildings. But, I think they were won over by the subsidised rent and safety from floods.”
He said the government planned to build apartments to house 5,000 more families in Muara Angke by 2019.
The government is also installing water pumps in the area to reduce flooding and is building a sea wall to keep out the encroaching ocean — though the project has come under fire from fishermen who fear for their catches and homes.
Nyoman said more immediate steps could be taken to make life more manageable for those vulnerable to flooding.
“People tend to only change their behaviours once they’ve been hit by a disaster. So, we need to push for prevention rather than corrective action,” the Mercy Corps worker explained.
“For example, (we) can show them the benefit of putting their belongings in a safe place ahead of floods, or explain why they shouldn’t throw garbage into the river,” he said. Thomson Reuters Foundation