Friday, July 28, 2006

Dumpster-thy-neighbor policy

In the "Metropolitan" section, Kompas wrote an article about North Jakarta's failure to receive the Adipura award due to garbage and drainage problem in the city. (Adipura is an annual award given to 'clean' cities -- don't ask me how do they define 'clean').

The mayor said that the problem with North Jakarta is, being in the mouth of some 13 rivers, garbage from the other cities stopped and accummulated there. So, to solve the problem (and win the next Adipura), the mayor has already had a solution: the city will build water gates in the rivers... which will be located in North Jakarta's border with the other cities.

This sounds stupid, but I won't blame the mayor. He just made a rational decision. The incentive (Adipura) is for individual cities. So why should the bother to solve the others' problem?

2 comments:

  1. it is called a short term solution. let's compare it with the major's short mind -i was about to say something else, but anyways-.

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  2. i wonder what will happen when the neighbour cities failed to get adipura next year. where will the dumpster go? i'm really sorry but i don't think decentralization has solved any problems that indonesian have... i believe several researchs showed that there has been some inefficiency and mismanagement of the regional budget due to the decentralization policy. not that the dumpster problem had anything to do with decentralization, but i assumed it had some involvement... =D

    i know that you guys probably did grasp the issues of decentralization very well, but do you guys know what's been keeping the government to revised the regulation? there have been several discussion regarding this issue but so far, nothing goes behind that... any comments?

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