Agency targets dangerous parking lots

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The city property control and management agency said Friday it would inspect the construction of all parking buildings in the capital, following a car accident in a shopping center in South Jakarta.

"We will inspect all parking garages in Jakarta to check if they meet building requirements for wall construction, as stipulated in a 2007 agency decree," agency head Hari Sasongko said.

He said the decree stipulated that walls in parking buildings must be resistant to collision as well as able to rigidly support structures.

Before the decree was issued, he said, developers were permitted to disregard the resistance factor.

The planned inspections come about following a car accident at the Permata Hijau International Trade Center in Kebayoran Lama, South Jakarta, on Thursday afternoon.

In the accident, the driver of a sedan, on the fourth floor of the shopping center parking garage, allegedly lost control and the car rolled backward, smashing through a one-meter-high wall on the spiral ramp, Warta Kota daily reported Friday.

Half of the car protruded from the car park, balanced four stories up, and sending a shower of debris smashing into the windshield of a sport utility vehicle below.

The accident, which did not result in injuries, was the second of its kind after a similar incident May 17 that killed a family of three, when their car plummeted from the sixth floor of the same parking garage.

No official statement has been released by the building management.

Governor Fauzi Bowo said such accidents would not have occured if developers complied with safety standards, and the building's construction was as stipulated in the license issued by the agency.

"It's OK to change designs to cut costs, as long as the changes do not result in safety hazards," he said at City Hall.

"Like a mule, they did not learn from their mistakes," he said referring to the shopping center management.

Earlier, the agency's head of building planning and monitoring, Widyo Dwiyono, said the trade complex building management had met all safety standards, as laid out in a 1991 bylaw on building construction.

After the first incident, however, the agency issued a new decree and has since sent two warning letters to the building management, requiring it to upgrade and reconstruct the walls to be resistant to collisions.

The agency inspected the building in September and found only the damage caused in the previous accident had been repaired to engineering standards set in the decree, Hari said.

"We asked them at the time why they had not applied the new engineering standards to all the walls," he said, but "they said the minor repairs were a model and they were still looking for tenders to complete the work".

"Apparently, the accident occurred before a suitable construction company was found."

Hari said the 1991 bylaw gives the agency authority to freeze the building management's licenses if they fail to address the problem.

"We'll freeze the management's operating licenses if they do not explain everything by next Monday or Tuesday at the latest," he said.

The suspension, he said, would be effective until the management fulfilled all design requirements detailed in the decree.