Jakarta Continually Efforts to Prevent Immoral Actions on Public Transport

Jakarta, MINA – Jakarta Vice Governor Ahmad Riza Patria, inspected public minivans at the Tebet Integration Bus Stop, South Jakarta, on Wednesday afternoon.

At that time, he was trying to ride the public minivan M 44 for Tebet – Kuningan route to ensure that public transportation in Jakarta was clean, safe, and at an affordable cost.

He asserted that the Jakarta administration would continue to make various efforts and implement appropriate and comprehensive regulations to prevent, minimize or even eliminate immoral acts (sexual harassment) on public transport, Beritajakarta reported.

“Today I tried to have a dialogue with the public minivan drivers. We talked a lot, one of which was about how to prevent sexual harassment from happening on public transport. I want to make sure we don’t have to be afraid to take public transportation, including a public minivan. I asked the passengers and they still feel safe and comfortable. The government is here to give solutions, we want to ensure that the problem of sexual harassment should not be taken lightly, but must be resolved together. If we don’t report, we won’t be caught. So, we must dare to report,” he expressed, as quoted by Jakarta PPID’s press release.

Based on data from the Jakarta Integrated Service Center for the Empowerment of Children and Women, there were 8 cases of sexual harassment in 2022, 7 cases in 2021, and 15 cases until July 2022.

Therefore, residents were urged to take precautions by being more careful and daring to report immoral acts on public transportation such as public minivans through the P2TP2A Service Post with telephone number 081317617622 which can be contacted 24 hours a day or Call Center 112.

“You must have the courage to report. Don’t be ashamed, let’s face it together. We have 86 experts, counselor officers, psychologists, and others to help provide understanding, education, and training, including counselors to residents to jointly handle cases of harassment, discrimination, including domestic violence that occurs in public places,” he explained.

He asserted that the discourse on the separation of male and female passenger seats in public transportation had not yet been realized due to various considerations.

Therefore, his party established the Women and Children’s Friendship Post (Pos Sapa) to deal with and prevent violence and abuse against women and children.

The complainant could directly call the complaint number 112 and would be assisted by officers who have been trained in handling related cases.

“It has been available at 23 Transjakarta bus stops, 13 MRT stations, and six LRT stations. In the future, we will keep upgrading it to reach public minivan services,” he explained, Wednesday.

As for the information, the training contained an excellent service curriculum, including handling or how to act in an emergency through the Public Transport Driver Certification program.

CCTV installations at various stations, bus stops, terminals, and public transportation are still undergoing, to detect and reduce the potential for immoral acts. Even, at JakLingko, the integrated ticketing system will implement the concept of ‘face recognition which is believed to optimize the comfort of passengers, especially women and children.

Thereby, Dishub is making comprehensive regulations for the public minivans and public transportation in Jakarta:

1. Optimize the existing Pos Sapa in Jakarta and increase its availability to reach public minivan services

2. Require public minivan or public transportation to put an information sticker in a place that is easily visible to passengers with a complaint number 112

3. Instruct all public minivans to put up emergency number information stickers to make them easy to read and clear and follow up with outreach with the community. Especially with organizations working on alleviating abuse and increasing the protection of women and children.

4. Improve the current Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Especially related to handling emergencies to adjust the need for prevention and handling of incidents of sexual harassment by prioritizing victim protection

5. Ensure that all drivers or public transportation officers understand their respective SOPs through socialization or even education and training

6. Further study of ideas related to public transportation or microtrans, specifically for women

7. Further study of the use of CCTV cameras and ticketing systems based on face recognition. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)