City wants prison terms for safety violators

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The city property management and control agency said Tuesday it wanted to amplify punishments from fines to imprisonment, for owners of buildings which failed to meet safety standards.

The agency's head Hari Sasongko said the agency was preparing a set of regulations to deter violators and others involved in the making of faulty building designs, following a string of cases pertaining to building safety standard requirements.

"I want violators, including the professionals who are responsible for building designs, to be subject to imprisonment," Harry told reporters at City Hall.

Imprisonment, he said, would be a bigger source of embarrassment for violators since fines had failed to prevent violators from repeating their mistakes.

The agency reported that approximately 80 percent of around 700 buildings in Jakarta at least eight stories high, were yet to receive mandatory safety clearance.

Hari said a regulation on building safety standards already carried both prison terms and fines as punishment.

Until now, however, no violators had ever been imprisoned, he said. In the past, whenever prosecutors had demanded imprisonment for violators, he said, the court had put the case 'on the back burner'.

"In the end, such cases vaporize and disappear from the courts," he said.

The most recent case that came under the agency spotlight occurred Dec. 11, 2007 when 19 employees of a Carrefour hypermarket in South Jakarta were rushed to hospital after inhaling excessive amounts of carbon monoxide (CO).

The incident had been caused by a problem with the power supply which caused the shop ventilation system to fail.

The following day, the city administration ordered the closure of the France-based retailer outlet and its basement parking area below Ratu Plaza on Jl. Sudirman, South Jakarta.

The agency later found the two generators used to back up the power supply at the hypermarket could supply up to 1,000 kilo volt ampere (kVA) each "but the actual output was only 300 kVA each".

"If the machines were working properly the power supply and ventilation would be fine," Hari said.

The agency have sealed the parking lot beneath the hypermarket indefinitely, until the store purchases replacement generators.

Another incident involving building safety standards occurred Dec. 6 last year when a sedan smashed through a one-meter-high concrete barrier on the spiral ramp of Permata Hijau International Trade Center parking garage, in Kebayoran Lama, South Jakarta.

The sedan was on the fourth floor of the garage when the driver reportedly lost control and the car rolled backwards through the wall.

Half of the car protruded from the ramp, four stories up, and sent a shower of debris onto the windshield of a sport utility vehicle below.

The incident, which did not result in injuries, was the second of its kind after a similar fatal accident May 17 last year. The May accident killed a family of three, whose car plummeted from the sixth floor of the same parking garage, after breaching another faulty barrier.