Month: January 2011

Indonesian Military Members Among Train Fare Dodgers

The Jakarta Globe

State-owned railway operator Kereta Api Indonesia is involved in a personal battle with military members who board trains without paying the fare.


Mateta Rizalulhaq, a spokesman for the company, said on Monday that KAI was working with the Indonesian Military (TNI) to crack down on fare-dodging soldiers.

“We sometimes carry out ticket inspections targeting TNI members,” Mateta said. “They [military members who ride the trains without paying] end up being punished by both KAI and the TNI.

“We drop them off at the next station or they have to pay twice the price of the original fare in order to stay on board.”

“I understand that the TNI also reprimands them but I have no idea what type of sanctions are imposed on offending soldiers,” he added.

Despite these assurances, news portal Republika Online reported that on the express service from Cirebon to Jakarta on Dec. 20 no action was taken by KAI inspectors conducting ticket checks.

According to the report, the inspectors were met with a mixture of reactions from around20 members of the military who had boarded the 6:15 a.m. train and were seated in the business-class section.

Some of them, according to the Republika report, attempted to cover up their military shirts with jackets when approached by inspectors.

The report further said that while some of the soldiers paid Rp 20,000 — well below the standard Cirebon business-class fare of Rp 55,000 — others refused to pay anything and instead attempted to challenge the KAI workers.

The rail inspectors ended up leaving those soldiers alone.

Mateta told the Jakarta Globe that KAI provided cheap tickets — up to 50 percent off — for members of the military.

“The TNI is responsible for informing its members of this fact, especially those soldiers who use the train as their main mode of transportation,” he said.

“We actually have a list of which TNI members take the train regularly,” he added. “Based on our data and their ID cards, we are happy to provide these soldiers with a discount.”

Mateta said he expected members of the military would be prepared to pay for their tickets.

“Considering they are from the military, the value of discipline is constantly drilled into them,” he said.

According to the Republika report, Hendi Helmy, a KAI spokesman in Cirebon, said that each week many military members failed to pay the fare before boarding trains, and that his staff was often powerless to confront them.

The railway operator recorded a net profit of Rp 154.8 billion ($17 million) last year from a loss of Rp 87.5 billion in 2008, according to its Web site

Prior Clash Cited as Cause of Attack on HKBP Church Leaders

The Jakarta Globe

An eyewitness to a violent attack on two church leaders in Bekasi told a district court on Monday that the attack occurred after members of the church’s congregation had mobbed a passing motorcyclist.


Ciketing resident Edy Suryo Purnomo was testifying at the Bekasi District Court in the trial of 13 men who stand accused of assaulting Asia Sihombing and Rev. Luspida Simandjuntak, from the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP), in September.

Asia was stabbed during the Sept. 12 attack while Luspida was beaten with a bamboo stick. The incident occurred as the congregation was on its way to a vacant lot in Ciketing, where it had been holding services after authorities sealed off the residential house it was using as a church in Pondok Timur Indah.

Edy, who lives near the vacant lot, told the court that a man had been mobbed by members of the HKBP congregation before the attack.

“Some 30 minutes before the riot happened, a motorcyclist passed by the field where the church was holding its service. Suddenly, from the direction of the congregation, someone screamed ‘Thief!’ and they started to beat up the motorcyclist,” Edy told the presiding judge, Wasdi Permana.

“To avoid a serious clash, I tried to prevent the motorcyclist from being beaten up really badly. I asked the congregation what was going on and told them I would take the man to the police.”

Edy asked the motorcyclist to identify himself, he said, and the man reportedly told him he was a journalist. Edy said the man showed him a camera and a press card, but he could not get a clear look at the details.

Both the judge and prosecutor, Priorenta, asked Edy why he failed to get the name of the motorcyclist or which media organization he worked for, to which Edy said the congregation members had pulled the man away from him and he did not get a chance to read the details on the press card.

“While they were interrogating the motorcyclist, men in white skullcaps arrived in a convoy of motorcycles and demanded to know why the congregation was beating up the motorist,” Edy continued. “They were defending the motorcyclist. This is how the attack began.”

The other two witnesses present at Monday’s hearing were a police officer, First Brig. Galih Dwi Setiawan, who was assigned to provide security for the congregation , and another local resident, Ruly Rukmana, who was driving by in his car when he was caught in the middle of the clash.

Galih said that even though he witnessed the incident, he could not identify the people involved.

“I have no idea which organization these men with the white caps were from. I did not see any emblems [on their clothing or their motorcycles],” Galih told the court. “I also do not know whether they were locals or outsiders.”

Galih said that he was too busy to identify any of the assailants because he was trying to get Asia away from the crowd an onto his motorcycle so he could take him to a hospital for emergency treatment.

New System to Register Migrant Workers Online

The Jakarta Globe

The government has launched an online registry to collect data on current and prospective migrant workers in a bid to prevent them from going abroad illegally.


The pilot project, which was launched on Thursday, is a joint effort by the National Board for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers (BNP2TKI) and the government of West Java, which has the highest number of migrant workers of all the country’s provinces.

The system, which will be tested in West Java first before spreading to East Java and West Nusa Tenggara, then to the rest of the country, will record personal and work information, including details about the job and departure dates.

Muhammad Jumhur Hidayat, chairman of the BNP2TKI, said the online system was the first of its kind in Indonesia.

“Other than providing data on migrant workers, this system will also help us avoid the risk of human trafficking and falsification of documents used to send worker abroad illegally,” he said.

“The data will be collected by the manpower offices in each district in the province, and will be made accessible by manpower offices in all other districts in West Java.”

The rollout of the online system comes ahead of the planned introduction of a call center later this year, which the BNP2TKI says will serve as a hot line for migrant workers seeking to report any abuse or other difficulties they face.

Jumhur said once the call center was operational, it would use data from the online system to identify workers in trouble and update information on specific workers.

The call center will also accommodate complaints, queries and reports from the general public, as well as prospective, current and former migrant workers and their families.

Roostiawati, head of foreign cooperation at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration’s directorate for migrant worker placement, said the online system was being introduced in West Java because it was one of the main sources of the country’s labor and the provincial government was able to support it with funding.

Meanwhile, Wahyu Susilo, a migration analyst with the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development, doubted the system could do anything to resolve the problems facing the country’s migrant workers.

“It’s nothing new because the BNP2TKI used to have an online system,” he said. “But was it effective? No, it wasn’t.

“If the previous system really did work, why has the BNP2TKI failed to answer even the most basic questions, such as how many Indonesians are working overseas?”

Wahyu added that rather than spend money on a new system, the BNP2TKI should have evaluated and improved the old system.

He said a crackdown was instead needed on unscrupulous placement agencies that charged lower fees but sent workers overseas illegally and without proper documentation.

Forest Concessions to Be Granted in Logged Land

The Jakarta Globe

The Forestry Ministry has announced that 500,000 hectares of land concessions will be granted this year in previously logged areas as part of a wider plan to keep virgin forests intact and slow the rate of carbon dioxide emissions.


Hadi Daryanto, the ministry’s director general of forestry management, said on Thursday that opening these concessions in so-called degraded forests would ensure that natural and peat forests remained untouched.

“Indonesia has 35.4 million hectares of degraded forest that we can designate as agricultural and forest concessions,” he said.

“By using degraded forests instead of virgin forests, we can develop more concessions and keep emissions low, as well as providing jobs in the forestry sector.”

The government sells permits each year to use publicly owned land for specific purposes such as agriculture, logging and mining. Prices for such concessions vary depending on the land’s location and intended use. The concessions are handed out throughout the year.

Last year, 487,744 hectares of such concessions came from degraded forests, surpassing the Forestry Ministry’s target of 450,000 hectares.

Hadi said reusing previously logged land was part of the government’s plan to suspend the issuance of new concessions in peat and primary natural forests.

The moratorium is part of a bilateral deal with Norway that went into effect on Saturday, the first day of 2011. In return for the moratorium, Norway will provide $1 billion in funding for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD-Plus) schemes.

“Besides implementing the Indonesia-Norway agreement, we can also use this to attain our national emissions reduction target of 26 percent by 2020,” Hadi said. “At the same time, it gives the ministry a role in helping to achieve the GDP growth target of 7 percent by 2014.”

He said the target for new concessions this year was up from 2010 because of an increased demand for wood pulp.

“Even though there’s rising demand for wood pulp, and hence for forest concessions, we’ve already mapped out the projected concessions so there’s no possibility of clearing natural or peat forests,” he said.

Hadi also said that because the issuance of land concessions was a lucrative business, the government was concerned about parties posing as brokers for investors seeking permits.

“We need a monitoring team to supervise the implementation of the moratorium on new concessions in peat and natural forests,” he said.

Mas Achmad Santosa, an environmental law expert, said the effective implementation of the moratorium could only be ensured with firm legal support.

“It will take some time before the government issues a policy as the legal instrument to back the moratorium,” he said.

“Therefore it’d be better if the president issued a decree on implementing the moratorium.”

Mas said that besides the lack of a legal foundation, the moratorium was threatened by the prospect of regional administrations not acting in line with the central government’s logging policy.

“One thing we need to be concerned about is the possibility of regional administrations issuing their own concessions in natural and peat forests,” he said.

“With regional autonomy now in place, regional administrations are under pressure to raise their own income.”