Medan, Indonesia – Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has a cough.
The president, according to reports, has been racked with a cough for the past month, which might not surprise residents of the capital Jakarta where air quality is among the worst in the world and where Jokowi was told by a court that he must clean it up.
“He has been coughing for almost four weeks and said he has never felt this way,” Indonesia’s Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Sandiaga Uno said after a cabinet meeting in Jakarta this week.
Doctors were diagnosing the cause of the president’s cough, Uno said, adding that it might be related to worsening air quality, which Jokowi has asked to be tackled “within a week”.
The cough and Uno’s remarks came as air quality in Indonesia’s capital has steadily plummeted in recent weeks, leading Swiss air quality technology company, IQAir, to release data that showed Jakarta had the worst air pollution in the world.
Even before that newly-released data, studies have consistently found Jakarta to be one of the most polluted places in the world due to a confluence of factors which include vehicle exhaust emissions, construction projects, the burning of biomass and other fuels, including coal, and the release of aerosols.
Source from www.aljazeera.com