Government to Form Study Team for Giant Sea Wall Project

Jakarta (Antara) - The government will soon set up a team to reassess the construction of the Giant Sea Wall mega project in North Jakarta, stated a minister. "The Giant Sea Wall is not carved in stone. We will form a team of experts who understand that the project will last not only for some 20 years but for good," Coordinating Minister for Economy Sofyan Djalil stated here on Tuesday night. Djalil remarked after chairing a coordination meeting with the relevant ministers to discuss the continuation of the Giant Sea Wall project. Present at the meeting were Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Environment Indroyono Susilo, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti, Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister M. Nasir, West Java Governor Ahmad Heriyawan, and Acting Banten Governor Rano Karno. The economic minister noted that the National Capital Integrated Coastal Development (NCICD) program to protect Jakarta and its fast-growing economy from the increasing threat of floods is still a crude plan and merely focuses on development in the downstream region, but has yet to pay attention to the problems in the upstream sector. Therefore, Djalil remarked that the important thing to be pursued was to carry out improvements in the upstream sector by developing large-capacity water catchment areas, carrying out afforestation of hills, fixing watershed areas, and building buffer dikes. "The Giant Sea Wall is a solution for the settlement of downstream problems but not yet for the upstream ones. So, we will form a team to conduct a review and report the results to the president within two months. The review will not be long. The important thing is that the team will work to prepare the study," Djalil affirmed. In the meantime, Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister M. Nasir stated that the government will form the team to study the continuation of the Giant Sea Wall project, which is to be integrated from upstream to downstream. "The team will be tasked to study the problems at the watershed area, the port, and how the Giant Sea Wall can be handled in a more integrated manner," Nasir noted. He emphasized that the solution to dealing with the problem of flooding in Jakarta is not only to build the giant sea wall, with a total funding of Rp340 trillion but to also take into consideration all technical and non-technical aspects. (*)