Unlicensed Air Quality Meters May Issue Hoax on Jakarta Air Pollution, Says Agency

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Jakarta Environmental Agency’s head of legal supervision, Wahyudi Rudiyanto, said that many privately owned air quality monitoring devices installed across the capital were not officially licensed but were disseminating data on air pollution in the city.

“They should be licensed and calibrated by the Environment and Forestry Ministry (KLHK), and then they could release the information. That's how it should be,” he told Tempo by phone, on Tuesday, September 19, 2023.

Yudi underlined that the present accurate data on air quality belongs to the Environmental Agency because it already has permission from the KLHK. He stopped short of mentioning which private parties have installed unlicensed air quality meters but revealed that they are based in East Jakarta, West Jakarta, and South Jakarta.

According to him, the agency has coordinated with the police. “Some of them have been shut down,” he added.

Yudi also said that the agency doubted the accuracy of the air quality meters owned by private companies. “So they (air quality information) could be a hoax because according to our data, the air quality has improved.”

Yudi suspected these companies had other wrongful purposes for distributing data about poor air quality in Jakarta.

Speaking at the revised regional budget meeting in Bogor, on Friday, September 15, the Jakarta Environmental Agency head Asep Kuswanto said he doubted the data on Jakarta's air quality provided by Swiss-based air quality technology company IQAir, which has recently been used as a reference by many people.

For the past few months, IQAir reported poor air quality in Indonesia’s capital and ranked Jakarta among the most polluted cities in the world.

DESTY LUTHFIANI

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