11,886 public phones damaged by vandals: Official

JAKARTA (JP): About one-third, or nearly 12,000, of all coin- operated pay phones in the capital and its surrounding areas are vandalized each month, an official with PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom)'s Greater Jakarta office revealed on Thursday.

The head of the office's public relation department, Thomik Armawan, said the latest data from May showed 11,886 of the 32,036 coin-operated public telephones installed by Telkom throughout Jakarta, Tangerang and Bekasi were out of order due to vandalism.

"The public is still not concerned (about the care and existence of pay phones) which were installed for public use," Thomik told The Jakarta Post.

Telkom officials said the vandalism of public pay phones included damage caused by efforts to pry open the cash boxes placed inside the phones, the insertion of objects into the coin slots, the stealing of the phone booths and the theft of the phones' handsets.

He did not disclose the estimated cost for maintaining the public phones, but said his office rarely earned a profit from the phones. Such acts of vandalism, he added, had taken place for years and seemed unlikely to end.

The acting head of the public telephone division at Telkom's South Jakarta office, Nursalam, said the high frequency of vandalism of public pay phones in his area had forced his office to reduce the number of telephones it installed.

"We temporarily have had to reduce the (number of telephone) units because the cost of spare parts is expensive," Nursalam said via phone.

Currently, the South Jakarta Telkom office operates 4,476 pay phones, slightly fewer than the 5,000 units it operated last year, he said.

A public relations official at Telkom's East Jakarta office, Iran A.R., claimed his area suffered the highest rate of vandalism in the capital.

"In South Jakarta and West Jakarta the rate of vandalism is not that high, but in East Jakarta, oh dear ... ," Iran sighed.

He could not give an exact figure, but said that every time his office fixed one damaged pay phone it found eight more vandalized.

Iran argued that the high rate of vandalism in East Jakarta was due to the vast slums located in the area.

An official at Telkom's West Jakarta office said he had proposed to his colleagues at Telkom's other offices in Greater Jakarta to stop repairing vandalized pay phones, instead installing new pay phones in areas where vandalism was less likely to occur.

"That will make (the vandals) learn their lesson," said the official, who asked not be named.

He said his staff responsible for repairing the damaged units had nearly given up because of what they saw as the futility of their efforts. "I have to give my men some encouragement to do (the telephone maintenance), which they have to do over and over again."

In the first six months of this year, the West Jakarta Telkom office has found 11 telephone units and 65 cash boxes stolen, he said.

But Thomik stated Telkom would not stop providing adequate facilities for the public. "We are committed to repairing (the broken units), in accordance with our motto 'customers first,'" Thomik said.

He added that so far in July, Telkom staff in Jakarta and its surrounding areas had repaired 10,201 broken pay phones, with some 1,685 additional units scheduled for repair.

"The availability is 94.86 percent of single-coin pay telephones and 94.73 percent for the multicoin pay phones," Thomik said, adding that single-coin telephones use Rp 100 coins, while multicoin pay phones accept almost all coins.

"The existence of public telephones is still very much needed despite the (increasing) use of cellular phones and the mushrooming telecommunications kiosks," Thomik said.

However, people who wish to use a pay phone are frequently frustrated in their efforts to find one in working order. (08)