ASEANEWS HEADLINE-CLIMATE CHANGE | INDONESIA: Northern Sumatra leaders raise white flag amid deadly floods
People wade through the floodwater in the aftermath of flash floods at Tukka village, Central Tapanuli, North Sumatra, on December 2, 2025. The death toll from floods and landslides that have struck Indonesia’s Sumatra island since last week has risen to 712, the National Disaster Management Agency said on December 2. (AFP/YT Hariono)
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INDONESIA JAKARTA Graves over homes: Jakarta’s cemetery crisis pushes out poor residents
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W ith at least 712 dead and hundreds more missing from floods and landslides across northern Sumatra, regional leaders have admitted that they cannot handle the crisis alone, underscoring deep budgetary and logistical gaps in disaster response.
Three Aceh regents, Central Aceh’s Haili Yoga, South Aceh’s Mirwan MS and Pidie Jaya’s Sibral Malasyi, have signed circulars admitting their limited disaster response capacity, with many villages still cut off even seven days after the disaster.
The letters detail damage to infrastructure, disrupted health services and impaired transportation, along with paralyzed economic activity.
Aceh Governor Muzakir Manaf even broke down in tears as he described the devastation from last week’s floods and landslides, calling the catastrophe a “second tsunami” that wiped out several villages, leaving large parts of the province in ruins.
He said the immediate priority was restoring access to isolated areas across 18 regencies and municipalities. However, East Aceh Regent Iskandar Usman Al Farlaky revealed on Tuesday that fellow regents were struggling due to a lack of heavy equipment and insufficient budgets.
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“Although we have heavy equipment, much of it is damaged and unusable.
Budget-wise, it is impossible for a region with a contingency budget allocation of only Rp 2 billion [US$120,461] to handle the situation,” Iskandar said, referring to the regency’s allocation for unforeseen expenses, as quoted by Tribunnews.com.
Under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration, regional government budgets have been significantly reduced this year, with further cuts planned for 2026, affecting both revenue-sharing funds and regional transfer funds.
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INDONESIA JAKARTA Graves over homes: Jakarta’s cemetery crisis pushes out poor residents
WATCH V YDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBtDe2ZkHoo
Tropical storms and weeks of heavy rainfall have triggered devastating floods and landslides across South and Southeast Asia, leaving more than 1,250 people dead in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand alone. Officials say many more remain missing, as communities struggle to cope with one of the region’s worst multi-country disasters in decades.
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To deal with the shortage of burial plots for the dead, Jakarta is planning to revitalize and expand several public cemeteries across the city at the expense of poor residents who have lived among the graves on city-owned land for decades.
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A man walks in front of his home on Tuesday inside the Menteng Pulo II public cemetery (TPU) in East Jakarta. The Jakarta administration is relocating 105 families residing inside the cemetery to Jagakarsa Rusunawa (low-cost rental apartment) in a bid to resolve the shortage of burial plots for the dead in the city. (Antara/Fauzan)
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A s Jakarta struggles to find places to bury its dead, the city administration is pushing a plan to evict hundreds of households from poor neighborhoods in West and East Jakarta to make way for plans to restore and expand public cemeteries (TPU).
The plan comes following a shortage of burial land in Jakarta, with at least 69 of the capital’s 80 TPU full.
Some of the remaining 11 cemeteries are at over 80 percent capacity, leaving only 118,000 graves that may dwindle quickly in the next few years.
To solve the issue, the city administration is planning to relocate people who have been living near cemeteries for years to make way for new graves.
Moving 280 families occupying the Rawa Bunga and Kebon Nanas TPU in East Jakarta, for example, may give enough room for 450 and 1,500 new graves, respectively.
In West Jakarta, where the municipality is strained by the limited availability of burial plots, the city administration is planning to expand the Pegadungan TPU in Kalideres district.
To do this, authorities would need to evict at least 127 households occupying the 65-hectare Kampung Bilik neighborhood, located next to the already-full cemetery.
Kampung Bilik is home to mostly semipermanent buildings and bamboo houses owned by residents who do not hold land certificates, making them more vulnerable to eviction.
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The land is owned by the Jakarta Parks and Forestry Agency, according to an information board installed in the area.
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Read also: Accommodating the dead: Jakarta faces grave shortage crisis
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