Floods Inundate Jakarta After Cuts to Disaster Relief

EAST JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Wiyanti was crushed by exhaustion after spending noon until midnight trying to purge water and mud from her family’s home. It still wasn’t completely clean.

Floodwaters more than a meter deep crept into the ground level of the two-story dwelling on March 3, soaking valuables that included the refrigerator, a living room mattress that doubled as a sofa, clothes and a clothing storage cupboard. Outside, more mud and trash dirtied the yard.

The flooding happened about a month after Indonesia President Prabowo Subianto announced national budget cuts that other government officials said would affect disaster sector funding — a cut of about 2.5 trillion Indonesian rupiahs (US$154 million) to agencies in charge of search and rescue, disaster management, and weather analysis.

Wiyanti finally paused her cleaning at the urging of her husband, Wasim, 70.

“Leave it alone, we’ll clean it up later,” he said in the early morning after the deluge.

For a few hours, the couple, who work as massage therapists, slept upstairs with their 17-year-old son. But at 4 a.m., Wiyanti, who is 55 and goes by the nickname Uum, awoke and tried to go downstairs. Her path was blocked.

“The water has reached as high as these stairs!” she shouted, confronting floodwaters for a second time.

Downstairs, the flood had risen to more than 2 meters (over 6.5 feet) deep. Trapped on the second floor, the couple chose not to evacuate their family to an emergency shelter. Instead, they stayed put, with no electricity or access to clean water or medicine. They prayed and waited. By March 5, the floodwaters had receded. But for three more days, they had no water for cleaning or bathing.

Some years, flooding is only an ankle-deep problem for Uum’s family. Other years are like it was during the March event. Their home in the area of Condet is less than 500 meters (less than one-third of a mile) from the Ciliwung River, which swells as rainwater drains into it.

Uum and her family are among about 10,000 people whose homes flooded in the province of Jakarta in the early March storm, along with around 61,000 people in Bekasi and about 4,000 in Tangerang, two cities close to Jakarta on Java, one of Indonesia’s five main islands. Two people died in the weather event, one in Jakarta and one in Bogor, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

The March flood was the most severe in the Jakarta region since an event in 2020 that left 19 people dead and displaced 31,000 from their homes, according to the Jakarta Regional Disaster Management Agency.

Non-transparent budget cuts

Prabowo cut the national budget by around 306 trillion rupiahs (US$18.8 billion) in almost all sectors related to public services in late January, sparking nationwide protests in February. The president said some of the money would go to a free lunch program for schoolchildren — a controversial program because of doubts about efficiency and concerns about potential corruption.

Later in February, Prabowo announced the creation of Indonesia’s second sovereign wealth fund, Danantara, saying 300 trillion rupiahs (US$18.4 billion) from budget cuts he described as targeting “inefficiency, corruption and misallocation” would go toward it.

The government-run investment fund collects dividends from seven major state-owned companies, including banks, utilities and mining firms. The goal is to invest profits to build capital and fund priorities such as establishing an industrial base to process nickel and make batteries in Indonesia, ramping up energy production, and improving infrastructure and food systems. A government report from November 2024 put the value of the fund’s assets at US$600 billion, saying the value is targeted to reach more than US$900 billion in the next few years. But Global SWF, an international consulting firm focused on sovereign wealth funds, puts the value at about US$172 billion.

Egi Primayogha, head of research and advocacy for Indonesia Corruption Watch, says he is concerned the fund is the president’s way of collecting the national budget for himself and people around him, something Prabowo’s ex-father-in-law, former President Soeharto, was accused of as an authoritarian leader who ruled Indonesia for more than 30 years. Egi also says the national budget cuts weren’t transparent and documents “were never opened to the public in detail.”

The Ministry of Finance published a general document about the president’s budget cuts and which institutions were affected. It didn’t show details about specific program cuts, although some government agencies have released more information about their sectors. Global Press Journal requested an interview with Ministry of Finance spokesperson Deni Surjantoro to discuss the budget cuts related to the disaster sector, but did not receive a response.

Conflicting messages on cuts

In the disaster sector, officials said the National Search and Rescue Agency budget was cut by around 480 billion rupiahs, about 32%, from about 1.49 trillion rupiahs (US$91.6 million) to about 1.01 trillion rupiahs (US$62 million).

The budget of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, which has a crucial role in climate, weather, and earthquake and tsunami analysis, was cut about 1.4 trillion rupiahs, or about 50%, from about 2.83 trillion rupiahs (US$174.1 million) to about 1.4 trillion rupiahs (US$86.1 million).

The National Disaster Management Agency received a cut of about 620 billion rupiahs, or about 43%, from around 1.42 trillion rupiahs (US$87.8 million) to around 800 billion rupiahs (US$49.6 million).

Agency spokesperson Ahmad Muhari, who goes by Aam, says the budget cut only impacts operational funds, such as agency travel expenses and building operations. He says it doesn’t affect post-disaster responses, such as setting up mobile public kitchens for people to cook and supplying tankers that bring in water for people to use for cleaning and showering.

However, Suharyanto, the head of the agency, made a vastly different statement about the budget cut in a February meeting with the House of Representatives that was broadcast to the public. Suharyanto — who like some Indonesians, uses one name — said the cuts impacted the procurement of equipment and vehicles for disaster management at regional levels, with funding slashed from 370 billion rupiahs (US$22.7 million) to 44 billion rupiahs (US$2.7 million). He said for several years, the national agency hasn’t been able to help local agencies provide equipment like mobile public kitchens and water tanker trucks.

At the regional disaster management agency in Jakarta, spokesperson Mohamad Yohan says his agency faced limitations in providing water tanker trucks for flood-affected areas even before this year, so they relied more on other institutions.

“Water tanks are a basic need that must be available at disaster locations for survivors,” he says, calling the provision of clean water “a basic right that must be fulfilled.”

Call for long-term solution

Yayat Supriatna, a lecturer in urban and regional planning at Trisakti University in Jakarta, says the major flooding problem in the Jakarta region stems from heavy rains in Bogor, a highland in West Java province. As forested parts of Bogor are increasingly logged, the area is no longer able to absorb as much rainwater, he says. Every time there is extreme rain in Bogor, the surrounding cities are flooded — as occurred in early March.

To tackle the flooding problems, both the national and Jakarta disaster management agencies carry out weather modification operations. When a major storm approaches, planes are flown to drop salt over the sea on the north side of Jakarta in an effort to trigger rainfall over the water instead of over land — costing around 200 million rupiahs (US$12,292) each time. Both agencies said they’ll continue the operations.

But Yayat says the operations are only a shortcut for trying to fix flooding problems in Jakarta and surrounding cities. He says while “the budget is really big,” the efforts aren’t a permanent solution.

Yayat, who lives in Bogor, recalls almost eight hours of high-intensity rainfall during the early March storm and says the flooding problem won’t be resolved without any plan to handle it across cities. He says the government needs to make flood management a part of its National Strategic Project, under which there are 77 different programs, so a solution can be prioritized and accelerated.

In the meantime, Uum and thousands of other residents who live in Jakarta, mostly by the river and in low-lying areas, have to cope with floods.
Uum hopes the problem can be resolved soon. It isn’t the first time a flood has impacted her family. In 2007, when her son was only 2 months old, the family had to evacuate during a flood that left 48 people dead and displaced around 276,000 from their homes in Jakarta. Two years ago, the family moved again when the home they lived in then was submerged in another flood.

Recovering can be difficult. By late May, Uum’s family was still without a working refrigerator. Belongings that included a television, a rolled-up carpet and a rice cooker marked with traces of mud remained stashed on the stairway long after the March storm had passed.

“I’m traumatized because my furniture has become messy,” Uum says, sounding angry and tired.

She fears floodwaters will rise again.