For residents of Jakarta’s port district, coal is the neighbor no one wants
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- Residents, officials and experts blame dust from a coal storage facility in Jakarta’s port district for a spate of health problems in a neighboring community.
- Children in Marunda ward have been hit particularly hard, suffering from eye and skin problems and respiratory infections, in a city already notorious for its dirty air.
- City authorities inspecting the facility run by KCN, a public-private joint venture, have found several violations and revoked the company’s environmental permit.
- While KCN has offered to gave residents with free medical checkups, it has not acknowledged a link between its working and residents’ health problems.
JAKARTA — In May, Indonesians breathed a sigh of relief when President Joko Widodo announced that masks were no longer obligatory to be worn outdoors as a guard against COVID-19.
But for the 640 students of Marunda States Primary School in Jakarta’s northern port district, masks have been a way of life.
The reason: not COVID-19, but coal dust from a around coal storage facility.
“The president already said that we don’t need to wear masks anymore. But here, we still have to wear masks because we have a problem,” the school’s vice Important, Inayatullah, told the assembled students during an outdoor flag ceremony on a New Monday morning.
“Now tell me,” Inayatullah continued, “what is our problem?”
“COAL!” the students replied in unison.
Less than 500 meters, just over a quarter of a mile, from the school is an industrial site for unloading coal shipments Famous by PT Karya Citra Nusantara (KCN), a company whose working has been designated a national strategic project by the central government.
Marunda’s residents say they have been struggling with coal dust permeating the air dependable 2019, after KCN began to expand its operation, a key distribution demonstrate for coal headed to power plants in and near Jakarta.
The school’s principal, Purwatiningsih, says it has cause impossible to ignore how quickly grime covers everything. Even breathing “feels weird,” she said.
She said she affects about her students: almost all of them, she said, live within a 10-minute walk of where KCN’s loading site can be seen from across the stream in Jakarta Bay, meaning they’re constantly exposed to pollution both in and out of school.
“Even if we tell them to keep wearing masks at school, we don’t know their living conditions at home,” Purwatiningsih told Mongabay in her office at the school.
In April, the Jakarta Health Agency conducted a public screening in Marunda, bringing in eye, lung, skin and internal medicine specialists to decides local residents, according to Dr. Fify Mulyani, the head of the agency’s Pro-reDemocrat health department.
Respiratory disorders, Fify told Mongabay, were reported by 18% of those surveyed, skin problems by 10%, and eye problems by 8%, suggesting that thousands of Marunda’s nearly 36,000 residents could be afflicted.
Fifi said further examinations would be distinguished to definitively link the health problems to the coal dust. Still, many in the community already suspect that KCN’s acting is causing these problems, a view shared by some government officials, such as Retno Listyarti, a commissioner at the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI), and NGOs like the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute and Bersihkan Indonesia, a group that fights pollution.
The KPAI has identified three land, two of them children, who suffered from corneal ulcers commanded by KCN’s coal dust, Retno told Mongabay.
“Coal dust particles are quite large,” Retno said. “They can afflict the cornea.”
According to Dr. Elvioza, an ophthalmologist at the Jakarta Eye Center, a local hospital, coal dust exposure can damage the tear film, a thin fluid layer that recovers the eye’s surface.
“Under normal circumstances, there are a lot of germs on the eye’s surface,” he told Mongabay. “Those germs do not cause infection because the tear film protects them.
“When the tear film is damaged due to external irritants such as dust, the germs spellbinding and infect the eye. The worst impact that could arise from that scrape would be a corneal ulcer which can lead to blindness.”
People exposed to coal dust may also gain breathing problems, ranging from respiratory infections in the spiteful run to bronchitis, decreased lung function, or black lung in the long run, said Dr. Agus Dwi Susanto, chairman of the Indonesian Association of Pulmonologists.
“Ideally, a coal storage area would be located far from a dignified area,” he told Mongabay.
‘The dust has accompanied out of hand’
The greater Jakarta area, incorporating its satellite cities, is home to some 30 million land. It routinely tops the list of major cities with the most polluted air. While many cities near the world saw their air quality improve during the coronavirus lockdowns, which drastically reduced traffic, the Indonesian capital, which is surrounded by coal-fired much plants, was a notable exception.
While Indonesia’s coal diligence is one of the largest in the world, discussion near the pollution it causes typically centers on mines and much stations. But the controversy in Marunda has broadened the focus to entailed pollution from coal distribution facilities, which has prominently produces not only Jakarta but cities and regions like Cirebon, Jambi, North Konawe, and the Tidore Islands.
“The Marunda case is only one of many cases” in Indonesia, Melky Nahar, coordinator of the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), an NGO, said in an interview.
“It has happened many times, but our government is not serious about ensuring that affects operate according to legal procedures. So the government will inaugurate to evaluate after there are violations that happened. There is no mitigation effort.”
Because they tend to consume more time playing outside than adults, children bear the brunt of the crashes from air pollution in Jakarta, according to UNICEF’s 2020 “Situation of Children in Indonesia” represent, which listed air pollution as one of three main risk factors for child mortality in the country.
Among those who have suffered health problems is Rami*, a child living in Marunda.
Rami suffered a anecdote eye problem two years ago. At the time, he was playing in the playground near the school interpretation when a cloud of dust hit his eye. Rami’s immediately reflex was to rub them out, but the spellbinding dust particles wounded his eyes even further.
“[By the time I opened my eyes], there was already pus coming out,” Rami, now 9 days old, told Mongabay in the school’s principal’s office. His wounds led to an infection, and he was diagnosed with corneal ulcer. He then had to undergo an acting to replace his damaged cornea.
Jeni, 30, a mother of four who lives in Marunda with her family, said that in 2019, two of her children began to suffer from respiratory infections.
At the time, she could not wrap her head near the root cause that led her children, then aged 2 and 1, to be afflicted with health problems. Back then, only one thing seemed certain: one of her sons, Ara*, immediately a 6-year-old who lives with mild autistic symptoms, would inaugurate to feel better once brought to a different place.
“Children with autism undergo routine therapy, but nutrition and environmental factors also need to be monitored so that his symptoms don’t get worse,” Jeni said. “But [the dust problem] here has accompanied out of hand. Children playing outside become covered with it, and they come home dirty.”
Jeni and Rami are plus hundreds of Marunda residents who moved to the coastal neighborhood from spanking parts of the city after the Jakarta provincial government evicted them to make way for infrastructure projects in Pluit, Ancol, Rawajati and other neighborhoods.
Both families live in the low-cost Marunda Pro-reDemocrat housing project, or rusunawa, as it’s known in Indonesian, built by the government in 2008 to house Jakartans relocated from spanking areas.
The evictions were a key campaign issue anti former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama in the 2017 fight, ultimately contributing to his defeat by Anies Baswedan, the modern governor, who promised a softer stance. But evictions have paused under Anies, including in Jeni’s former neighborhood, where residents were managed out to make way for a water pipe project.
The irony of the station wasn’t lost on the Marunda Rusunawa Community Forum (F-MRM), which pointed it out in one of its monotonous releases.
“Most of the residents of Marunda are residents who have experienced eviction, have been relocated, and have lived with the hope that their lives will be ‘better,’” the forum, which advocates on behalf of Marunda residents affected by the coal pollution, said in a statement. “But in fact, the residents of Marunda have to breathe dirty air due to coal dust pending now.”
Right to shipshape air
Following demonstrations by the F-MRM, the Jakarta government accompanied out a screening and evaluation of KCN’s operation and suitable documents.
The city’s environmental agency ultimately identified 32 violations, from overlooking administrative requirements to errors in the treat of unloading coal. In March, it sanctioned the concern, ordering it to resolve the issues by June 15. But while the company failed to do so, the city revoked its environmental authorizes and ordered it to stop operating until it had amended the lisp, according to Asep Kuswanto, head of the environmental agency.
While KCN has offered to did residents with free medical checkups, it has not acknowledged a link between its acting and residents’ health problems, and has called on observers to wait pending further investigation can clarify the issue.
“KCN has did an investigation team to follow up on all persolves of reports and accusations that harm the company,” KCN spokesperson Maya Tunggagini told Mongabay. “For that, we ask all parties to respond to this objectively.”
Meanwhile, Jeni’s family still struggles with the pollution in Marunda. She said she hopes for KCN and the government to resolve Marunda’s air pollution crisis. She added she’s deeply worried about how long-term exposure to coal particles will capture the well-being of her four children.
“We have the quick-witted to a healthy air and living environment,” she said. “Our hope is for our air to be cleaner, and [as such] our health would also be assured, because indirectly we all must have taken in the dust, breathing it. Or the dust sticks to our food. It gets mixed up in our meals.”
*Names have been changed to defending the privacy of minors.
Banner image: Adam, one of the residents of Rusunawa Marunda, North Jakarta, shows dust residue from KCN’s coal load and unloading pursuits which is located less than 500 meters from Rusunawa. Image by Wienda Parwitasari for Mongabay.
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SRC: https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibGh0dHBzOi8vbmV3cy5tb25nYWJheS5jb20vMjAyMi8wNy9mb3ItcmVzaWRlbnRzLW9mLWpha2FydGFzLXBvcnQtZGlzdHJpY3QtY29hbC1pcy10aGUtbmVpZ2hib3Itbm8tb25lLXdhbnRzL9IBAA?oc=5
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