Jakarta: The number of people killed in the heavy floods in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta and adjacent regions has increased to 43, the Jakarta Post reported on Friday, citing the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management.


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Heavy rains have been lashing Greater Jakarta since New Year`s Eve. The ensuing floods were further aggravated after several rivers burst banks. 


Public transportation has been severely disrupted, and several areas have got completely isolated and inaccessible for rescuers to reach.


Aside from physical danger, floods have increased the risk of outbreaks of potentially fatal waterborne diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery.


As of Thursday morning, over 62,000 people were evacuated in Jakarta alone, disaster mitigation agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said, although later in the day he told news channel Metro TV the number of evacuees were down to around 35,000 people. Rainfall at an airport in East Jakarta measured at 377 millimeters (15 inches) early on Jan. 1, the highest daily reading during major floods since at least 1996, according to the Meteorology, Clilmatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG).


President Joko Widodo told reporters evacuation and safety measures should be prioritised and called for more coordination between city administrations and the central government. On his Twitter page, Widodo blamed delays in flood control infrastructure projects for the flooding. He said some projects have been delayed since 2017 due to land acquisition problems.


Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan said authorities deployed hundreds of pumps to suck water from residential areas across the capital, which had allowed some people to return home. "They want to return home immediately and start cleaning up their houses as soon as they are able to enter their houses as water recedes," Baswedan told reporters during a visit to a densely populated area in East Jakarta affected by the flood.


Residents waddled through murky water to see the governor while workers pumped water out of the area into a nearby river.


Jakarta and its surroundings are home to more than 30 million people. More than 50 people died in one of the capital’s deadliest floods in 2007 and five years ago much of the centre of the city was inundated after canals overflowed.


The government announced last year that it is relocating the capital to East Kalimantan province on Borneo, though the planning ministry pledged that the government will invest $40 billion in modernizing Jakarta.