FFor the residents of Marunda, it is part of everyday life to sweep the floors in their homes every few hours. It doesn’t take any longer for a fine black layer to form on the tiles of the apartment complex in northeast Jakarta. “It’s coal! So fat!” says a resident named Adin, sitting at the entrance to an apartment block.
He holds two fingers in front of his chest at a distance the thickness of a paperback book. A little later, another resident named Maulana strokes the ceramic with his index finger to make the effect clear: a dirty streak of black dust grains has collected on the edge of his finger.
From one of the upper floors, Maulana, who like many Indonesians only has one name, shows where he thinks the coal dust is blowing from. Just a few hundred meters from the settlement you can see a harbor complex with three rusty ships lying ashore. Further back, a company had huge piles of coal stored, says Maulana.
Masks against air pollution
The camp cannot be seen with the naked eye from here. But large black spots can be seen on satellite images. “When the wind comes from that direction, it is particularly dusty,” says the man. The Indonesian blames the coal dust for complaints that are widespread among the residents: skin rashes, dry coughs, black sputum.
The residents in Marunda have been experiencing something for a long time that many people in Jakarta are increasingly struggling with today. The Swiss company IQ-Air named Jakarta the city with the worst air in mid-August. The company writes that air quality has decreased significantly since 2017. For weeks, Jakarta has been one of the top places on the list of cities with the most dirt in the air. “Unhealthy” is the category in which the air in Jakarta has been classified almost every day since May. The sky over Jakarta has a whitish tinge, as if you were looking through a pane of frosted glass. On some days the white-grey haze turns into a toxic yellow-brown in the upper layers.
Due to air pollution, the authorities are now recommending wearing mouth and nose protection again, which had almost disappeared in the short term after the corona pandemic. Around half of the pedestrians who walk on the streets or who come out of buses and trains onto the capital’s sidewalks wear masks. Like never before, the dirty air is now shaping public perception – especially since Indonesian President Joko Widodo complained of a cough that lasted for weeks. If you have the money, you can equip your apartment with expensive air filters or escape to the Indonesian holiday island of Bali. Most of the metropolitan region’s 34 million residents cannot afford one or the other.
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