saco-indonesia.com, Ribuan titik di sejumlah ruas jalan Ibu Kota rusak seusai terendam banjir. Kondisi ini akan dapat membahayakan pengguna jalan, terutama pengendara sepeda motor.

Berdasar data Dinas PU DKI, jalan rusak telah terdapat di 547 ruas dengan jumlah 6.446 titik seluas 136.117 meter persegi. Dari jumlah itu, yang telah tertangani baru 5.160 titik atau 107.266 meter persegi. Sebanyak 1.286 titik atau setara 28.851 meter persegi belum dapat tertangani.

Kepala Dinas Pekerjaan Umum (PU) DKI Manggas Rudy Siahaan juga mengaku terus akan berupaya untuk mengurangi volume jalan rusak. Perbaikan masih bersifat tambal sulam dan belum permanen lantaran menunggu musim hujan berakhir.

”Kalau tidak hujan, jalannya kering, kita akan segera perbaiki,” ungkapnya. Dia juga meminta masyarakat untuk bersabar karena jalan rusak timbul sangat cepat. Petugas Satgas Jalan Rusak telah dikerahkan untuk seluruh wilayah DKI.

Pengamat perkotaan Universitas, Trisakti Nirwono Joga, juga mengatakan perbaikan jalan selama musim hujan tidak akan efektif. Ini lantaran pengaspalan membutuhkan suhu panas. ”Perbaikan sekarang baru sementara sifatnya,” ungkapnya.

Kendati demikian, Pemprov DKI tidak boleh berdiam diri karena jalan rusak bisa menimbulkan korban. Bila terjadi kecelakaan akibat jalan rusak, warga juga bisa menuntut Pemprov DKI. Dia juga menyarankan Dinas PU DKI untuk dapat mengumumkan perbaikan jalan kepada publik sehingga masyarakat dapat menghindari jalan tersebut. ”Masalah jalan di Jakarta ini sangat krusial. Macet di satu titik bisa menimbulkan kemacetan yang panjang,” tandasnya.

Pakar jalan dari Laboratorium Struktur dan Material Fakultas Teknik Universitas Indonesia (FTUI) Sigit P Hadiwardoyo telah menilai kerusakan jalan di Jakarta kebanyakan merupakan retak stripping (pengelupasan lapisan permukaan). Itu telah disebabkan pemadatan yang tidak sempurna saat pelaksanaan awal. Biasanya karena kontraktor kekurangan waktu pengerjaan.

Lamanya proses pencairan anggaran dan lelang telah membuat kontraktor dikejar tenggat waktu yang sangat terbatas. ”Dengan demikian, kontraktor harus bekerja siang-malam agar pengerjaan selesai sesuai jadwal yang telah ditentukan. Hal ini yang telah membuat pengerjaan menjadi terburu-buru sehingga kemungkinan ada standar pengerjaan yang dipaksakan,” paparnya.

Menurutnya, kerusakan jalan harus segera diperbaiki sehingga tidak melebar. Jika kerusakan terjadi pada bagian atas, perbaikan bisa dilakukan dengan menambal menggunakan jenis campuran sejenis atau campuran aspal beton. Namun, perbaikan pada musim hujan seperti ini tetap tidak akan sempurna.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

From sea to shining sea, or at least from one side of the Hudson to the other, politicians you have barely heard of are being accused of wrongdoing. There were so many court proceedings involving public officials on Monday that it was hard to keep up.

In Newark, two underlings of Gov. Chris Christie were arraigned on charges that they were in on the truly deranged plot to block traffic leading onto the George Washington Bridge.

Ten miles away, in Lower Manhattan, Dean G. Skelos, the leader of the New York State Senate, and his son, Adam B. Skelos, were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on accusations of far more conventional political larceny, involving a job with a sewer company for the son and commissions on title insurance and bond work.

The younger man managed to receive a 150 percent pay increase from the sewer company even though, as he said on tape, he “literally knew nothing about water or, you know, any of that stuff,” according to a criminal complaint the United States attorney’s office filed.

The success of Adam Skelos, 32, was attributed by prosecutors to his father’s influence as the leader of the Senate and as a potentate among state Republicans. The indictment can also be read as one of those unfailingly sad tales of a father who cannot stop indulging a grown son. The senator himself is not alleged to have profited from the schemes, except by being relieved of the burden of underwriting Adam.

The bridge traffic caper is its own species of crazy; what distinguishes the charges against the two Skeloses is the apparent absence of a survival instinct. It is one thing not to know anything about water or that stuff. More remarkable, if true, is the fact that the sewer machinations continued even after the former New York Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, was charged in January with taking bribes disguised as fees.

It was by then common gossip in political and news media circles that Senator Skelos, a Republican, the counterpart in the Senate to Mr. Silver, a Democrat, in the Assembly, could be next in line for the criminal dock. “Stay tuned,” the United States attorney, Preet Bharara said, leaving not much to the imagination.

Even though the cat had been unmistakably belled, Skelos father and son continued to talk about how to advance the interests of the sewer company, though the son did begin to use a burner cellphone, the kind people pay for in cash, with no traceable contracts.

That was indeed prudent, as prosecutors had been wiretapping the cellphones of both men. But it would seem that the burner was of limited value, because by then the prosecutors had managed to secure the help of a business executive who agreed to record calls with the Skeloses. It would further seem that the business executive was more attentive to the perils of pending investigations than the politician.

Through the end of the New York State budget negotiations in March, the hopes of the younger Skelos rested on his father’s ability to devise legislation that would benefit the sewer company. That did not pan out. But Senator Skelos did boast that he had haggled with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, in a successful effort to raise a $150 million allocation for Long Island to $550 million, for what the budget called “transformative economic development projects.” It included money for the kind of work done by the sewer company.

The lawyer for Adam Skelos said he was not guilty and would win in court. Senator Skelos issued a ringing declaration that he was unequivocally innocent.

THIS was also the approach taken in New Jersey by Bill Baroni, a man of great presence and eloquence who stopped outside the federal courthouse to note that he had taken risks as a Republican by bucking his party to support paid family leave, medical marijuana and marriage equality. “I would never risk my career, my job, my reputation for something like this,” Mr. Baroni said. “I am an innocent man.”

The lawyer for his co-defendant, Bridget Anne Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, a Republican, said that she would strongly rebut the charges.

Perhaps they had nothing to do with the lane closings. But neither Mr. Baroni nor Ms. Kelly addressed the question of why they did not return repeated calls from the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., begging them to stop the traffic tie-ups, over three days.

That silence was a low moment. But perhaps New York hit bottom faster. Senator Skelos, the prosecutors charged, arranged to meet Long Island politicians at the wake of Wenjian Liu, a New York City police officer shot dead in December, to press for payments to the company employing his son.

Sometimes it seems as though for some people, the only thing to be ashamed of is shame itself.