Organda, weather agency recruited for transportation safety campaign

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Transportation Ministry says it will include the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) and the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) in its land and sea transportation safety campaign.

"Our program now involves suppressing the number of transportation accidents over all modes of transportation," said Transportation Minister Jusman S. Djamal on Wednesday.

Speaking to the media after a meeting with House legislators on transportation affairs, Jusman said the ministry would collaborate with Organda in managing land transportation.

"Stricter monitoring of the implementation of transportation regulations will have to be applied. We don't want a bus to endanger the lives of people because it has no brakes or runs with slippery tires," the minister said, referring to a fatal bus accident last Saturday.

The brakes on the speeding bus carrying school children in Cianjur regency, West Java, failed before the vehicle careered off a bridge, killing 16.

"Although it hasn't been reported much in the media, there have been many efforts from (the ministry) to improve land transportation safety. In many areas, we also collaborate with the police," Jusman said.

Efforts to improve land transportation safety have included a focus on qualitative rather than quantitative credentials in selecting shuttle bus operators for routes to and from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Qualitative criteria for the upcoming airport route tender include the ability to provide good, cheap services to passengers and pass gas emission and vehicle age tests.

Jusman added that monitoring adherence to safety measures by sea transportation operators is easier than for land transportation operators as harbor captains watch over operations at sea.

"To improve sea transportation, we will collaborate with BMG for morning weather warnings. If there are huge waves of about four to six meters high, the agency will report to us in the morning," he said.

Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) chairman Bambang Susantono told The Jakarta Post that collaboration with other organizations in gathering secondary data was normal practice in foreign governments.

"Data from other sources is important to prevent accidents from occurring," he said.

Bambang said accident prevention, or "active safety measures", can be difficult to orchestrate because they often involve multiple organizations. "The first step to take is to identify possible aspects of accidents before constructing such prevention methods."

The transportation society believes that the long-term goal of active safety should be balanced with short-term passive safety goals. The challenge, according to MTI, is in coordination and organizational management itself.