The Progress of Normalizing Ciliwung River (English)

Ciliwung River, or back in the Dutch colonial days they called it Tji Liwung, is the main river in capital city in Jakarta. It flows into 2 provinces, D.K.I Jakarta itself, and West Java.

As the time passing by, one by one of families from rural cities from around Indonesia such as Medan, Padang, Ambon, and many others, starts to move in Jakarta. Whether they realized or not when they were moved for not having sufficient budget, they keep moving into the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta. The reason they moved to Jakarta was because that they thought getting money is a lot easier in Jakarta rather than in their own hometown, since it’s where the biggest companies in whole Indonesia are operating.

Ciliwung River flows along until 119 kilometers long along 2 provinces, including the downtown of the capital city Jakarta. The problem is, the section that passing downtown of Jakarta, is where the slum is. If we look closer, on that area there are so many problems for those who live on the side of the river, including health, thugs, appropriate clean water for consumption, and many more.

Typhus, diarrhea, cholera are only some of the disease that the society are facing currently. The cause of those diseases is because of shifting of the function on the side of Ciliwung River, especially in Jakarta area.

Before, in the early 19th century, when the Dutch colonized Batavia (Jakarta), everyone including the highest rank of the society at that time, drinking the water from Ciliwung River for daily use. So it shows that it is not impossible even for us to shift it back like before, so then the river can be the source of living for people in Jakarta.

Imagine that people can use the Ciliwung River for many benefits, such as mass transportation (since it split across the city), so then it will reduce the traffic on the road while the population is growing every single day.

In 2012, Joko Widodo the ex-governor of D.K.I Jakarta, who now became the President Republic of Indonesia, were the initiator to starts the program of normalizing the Ciliwung River. He was inspired by the time when the Dutch were in control of the government in Batavia, including controlling the mass transportation back then. He realized that the Indonesian people mindset today has been changed so much compare to the day back then, but He believes that the Indonesian people mindset could be change as long as the leader has a willingness to change it, so he start to do so.

As a Jakarta citizen, we are really hoping that there will be a major change when the Ciliwung River normalized. Change by how the mass transportation works, so it not only focused on the road, but also using the Ciliwung River as an alternate for people going to work and back home daily. Not only that, we are really hoping on people (Jakarta citizen) thought by protecting their environment.