The Jakarta Post 19 Mar 18;
After two days of clearing the sea of trash at a mangrove area in Muara Angke, North Jakarta, nearly 50 percent of the 1,000 cubic meters of garbage has been removed to Bantargebang landfill in Bekasi, West Java, an official has said.
Video and images of the piles of garbage went viral last week and the city administration responded by deploying workers to clear the area by hand. The area had reportedly been cleared from garbage at the end of 2017.
The head of the Thousand Islands environmental sub-agency, Yusen Hardiman, said on Monday morning that about 34 tons of garbage in the mangrove area had been removed to the landfill with the help of nine trucks, four ships and two amphibious backhoes.
“When we started the cleaning [on Saturday], we could barely see the water in the area, but now we can see it,” Yusen said, as quoted by kompas.com, adding that the 19 tons of garbage was removed from the area on Saturday and the remaining 19 tons of garbage was removed on Sunday.
Around 100 workers from the Thousand Islands environmental sub-agency, Public Facility Maintenance Agency and the Indonesian Military jointly cleared the mangrove area. (vny)
