Jakarta’s motorists say ‘outrageous’ plan to punish high-emissions vehicles hurts the poor

Efforts by Jakarta, the world’s most polluted city, to address the issue reveal the divide between the reality of low-income drivers and the need for cleaner air

Citizens, critics of the pilot now underway in Jakarta say the effort is prone to abuse and unfairly targets ordinary people instead of big corporations

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Downtown Jakarta shrouded in haze due to air pollution. Jakarta is the world’s most polluted city. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:30am, 22 Sep 2023Updated: 12:07pm, 22 Sep 2023

Plans to tackle Jakarta’s pollution crisis by tying road taxes to the emissions output of older cars and motorbikes have been pilloried by some city motorists as punitive, prone to abuse and targeting ordinary people rather than big businesses responsible for toxins in the air.

The new regulations, currently being piloted in Jakarta this month, make it mandatory for motor vehicles over three years old to be tested for their emissions level, with a ‘pass’ the prerequisite for the annual road tax.

Vehicles that fail the benchmark test are in danger of having their road permits revoked, the Transport Ministry said this week, adding officials would carry out random checks on city streets.

Jakarta is the world’s most polluted city where the dangerous particulates of PM 2.5 frequently hit 116.7 micrograms per cubic metres (µg/m3) on a bad day, according to IQAir, a Swiss-based air quality technology company - 35.4 micrograms is considered unhealthy by global standards.

Yet the city’s attempts to address the issue has revealed the chasm between the logic for cleaner air in Asia’s megacities and the realities faced by lower-income drivers already contending with terrible traffic and unable to upgrade their vehicles.

Motorcyclist Eko Prasetyo, 26, who lives in East Jakarta, is among those already fined in a random police emissions test.

“I had to pay 250,000 rupiah (US$16) because my bike’s emissions were off the charts,” he told This Week in Asia. “That’s more than what I earn in a day, gone just like that!”