Separately, Pekalongan Mayor HA Afzan Arslan Djunaid said that to deal with the matter, his administration has taken several preventive measures, one being the Blue Deal Program to tackle the tidal flooding that has occurred in the last 12 years.
The Blue Deal program will be carried out in collaboration with communities and environment organizations.
“We are collaborating with communities and organizations such as Partnership Adaptation Fund Program, Mercy Corps Indonesia (MCI) and Earthworm Foundation Indonesia (EFI). We also involve a technical team from the Dutch Water Authority (DWA) or the Dutch Water Council to help mitigate floods and tidal waves in the form of Blue Deal cooperation,” explained Afzan.
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“I brought the Dutch experts to Pekalongan to immediately review and hopefully cooperation can be achieved,” he continued.
He said that when negotiating the Blue Deal cooperation, the Dutch Water Council gave a lot of input and recommendations for the region. The city of Pekalongan is said to have the same characteristics as the Netherlands, which is below sea level. (rr)