By Agnes Winarti
Published in Bali Daily/The Jakarta Post Monday, February 25 2013
While the mountain of garbage accumulates in the Suwung landfill, the Sarbagita Forum continued to delay taking any firm action to correct the improper waste management at Bali’s largest landfill by providing more time for the private operator to comply with requirements in the nine-year-old agreement.
“If by the end of the year, it [the private operator] still fails to fulfill its contractual obligation to build gasification infrastructure, the Sarbagita administrations will terminate all activities,” Sarbagita Forum chairman I Ketut Sudikerta told Bali Daily over the weekend.
Sudikerta is currently also Badung deputy regent and is running for deputy governor alongside incumbent Governor Made Mangku Pastika in the ongoing gubernatorial election.
The Sarbagita Forum itself consists of the deputy mayor and deputy regents of the four administrations Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar and Tabanan. The forum has known of the performance failure of the operator since 2010, however, no action has been taken to penalize the breaches of contract.
Currently, under a 20-year contract signed in 2004, the 38-hectare Suwung landfill in Denpasar is operated by private company PT Navigat Organic Energy Indonesia (NOEI). In the contract, PT NOEI has agreed to apply a waste-to-energy technology called GALFAD, which consists of gasification, landfill gas extraction and anaerobic digestion, commonly known as composting. The company had boasted that it would be able to produce 9.6 megawatts (MW) of electricity per day, 5.6 MW of which would be produced from the gasification technology.
However, the company has been generating a mere average 500 kilowatts to 1 MW of electricity daily since December 2008 and has never fully implemented all the promised technology, leaving the gasification machinery out of their operations.
During a recent interview with Bali Daily, the president director of PT NOEI, Agus N. Santoso acknowledged that his company had never installed the gasification machinery at Suwung.
“We have not imported the machine yet,” Agus said.
“Importing the machine would be a fatal investment decision for us, after we learned that the waste moisture level and the waste characteristics in Bali are problematic,” added Agus. He argued that he had only learnt about the unsorted waste collection in Indonesia after taking on the project, having previously assumed that Bali had a proper waste sorting system just like in European countries. Out of the some Rp 160 billion (US$16.4 million) investment that PT NOEI claimed to have made in Suwung, Agus said some had been spent on erecting a waste sorting facility, which as of today remains idle.
Agus stated that PT NOEI had proposed contract revisions to the Sarbagita Forum since 2010. “Without any contribution from the administrations, it would be difficult for us to perform,” he said, citing the implementation of a dumping fee for private operators was the norm for successful waste management in various countries worldwide. During the project bidding process from 2001 to 2004, PT NOEI, which was newly established in 2003, was the only company that submitted a waste management project proposal without a dumping fee required from the administrations.
Nonetheless, Sudikerta said that the forum remained firm on declining the payment of any dumping fees. “That’s impossible. Badung regency is not willing to do so, nor are the other administrations,” said Sudikerta.
Every day, around 700 tons of garbage is sent to Suwung landfill. About 45 percent of the load is transported from Denpasar municipality, 10 percent from Badung regency, and around 3 percent from Tabanan regency.
A source inside the Denpasar mayor’s office said: “Obviously, PT NOEI has breached its contract. We prefer contract termination because we see that the company is unlikely to make any improvements, while it’s burdening Denpasar administration. We want a new operator that is more competent in terms of management and technology.”
Denpasar deputy mayor IGN Jaya Negara, who is a member of the decision making authority Forum Sarbagita, was unreachable for comments.
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