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Workers loaded discarded face masks onto a truck of PT Wastec International in Ancol, Jakarta, that will destroy the waste to cut the COVID-19 transmission chain. ANTARA PHOTO/Aditya Pradana Putra/foc/sh

The Environment and Forestry Ministry has built more medical waste treatment facilities in regions, the ministry's Director General of Waste and Hazardous Waste Management (PSLB3), Rosa Vivien Ratnawati, stated.

The ministry has worked jointly with the provincial administrations to develop incinerators close to the waste sources, Ratnawati remarked here in a text message sent to ANTARA on Friday.

"To apply the proximity principle, the ministry, in cooperation with provincial administrations, built a medical waste treatment facility in Makassar in 2017 and included the program of healthcare-sources hazardous waste treatment facility during the period from 2020 to 2024 as a major project in the national medium-term development plan for the 2020-2024 period," she noted.

Within the next five years, the ministry will build 32 medical waste treatment facilities equipped with incinerator technology at several locations.Development in the five locations -- Aceh, West Sumatra, South Kalimantan, West Nusa Tenggara, and East Nusa Tenggara -- had begun in 2020, with a total capacity of 1,200 kilograms per hour, followed by development at six other locations in 2021 and seven locations for the 2022-2024 period.

"The government's program is aimed at eliminating general and medical waste in handling the COVID-19 pandemic to cut the transmission chain of the virus from medical waste," she emphasized.

Ratnawati pointed to a notable rise in the number of companies that offer hazardous waste treatment services, from only six companies in 2018 concentrated in Java Island, to 20 companies, as of February 2021, with a total capacity of 384,120 kilograms of waste per day.

She applauded a report of the Indonesian Ombudsman on medical waste management in some regions that had yet to meet the standard, adding that the ministry will strive to improve the implementation of the policy on medical waste management//ANT