To support VIY 2008, Govt builds waste disposal and processing facilities in Denpasar

Posted on June 17th, 2008 in tourism news bali, denpasar, viy 2008

Jakarta, (ANTARA News) - Within the frame of Visit Indonesia Year 2008, the ministry of public works has built a waste processing installation (IPAL) in Denpasar, Bali, scheduled for dedication on Saturday (June 14).

"A big-scale IPAL had been built by the Denpasar Sewerage Development Project (DSDP)," Director General of Ciptakarya which deals with housing, planning and development at the Public Works Ministry Budi Yuwono said in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The result of a feasibility study of the DSDP project shows that Bali`s earnings in 2009 will increase to Rp 706.478 billion, while without an IPAL, the earnings had been predicted to reach only Rp 313.99 billion.

According to Budi, current competition in the tourism sector has also involved environmental issues like waste water management, not only luxury hotels, as pollution has also become a crucial problem these days.

Budi Yuwono also said that the Minister of National Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik once told about a story that several years ago there was a Japanese tourist in Bali who complained of diarrhoea suspected caused by bad sanitation in the island resort.

Consequently, the happening caused a 80 percent drop in the number of Japanese tourists visiting the island paradise in eight months after that, whereas previously the Japanese accounted for the majority of the tourists visiting the tourist resort island.

The result of the feasility study of the DSDP project also revealed that an IPAL would significantly reduce the pollution of beaches and the sea by waste materials.

With a DSDP, the pollution rate reached 106 tons per day, and without an IPAL the pollution rate would reach 128 tons per day.

The first stage of the DSDP will serve 10,000 houses, or 50,000 people. The Ciptakarya Director General also said that the installation which is worth more than Rp 600 billion, has been long awaited by business establishments and hotels as well as restaurants and the general public.

"Restaurant operators in Bali often complained of their clogged waste disposal conduits, so that every month they had to use the services of conduit cleaners for which they have to pay a great deal of money, while with a DSDP in place, that would not happen, except and they had to spend much less for such cleaning work, Budi Yuwono said.

Besides reducing environmental pollution, the water from the waste processing from the DSDP could still be used for special purposes, such as for spraying city parks. This is practiced in some other countries, like Singapore, where IPAl services had reached 100 percent.

"This would need lots of campaigns and familiarization, because our people are still reluctant to spend their money on dealing with waste disposal and sanitation," the director general said.(*)

Source: ANTARA News