Bus passengers complain of messy state of terminals

JAKARTA (JP): Many passengers returning to the capital after spending their Idul Fitri holidays in their home towns denounced the city administration for failing to keep clean the public facilities and sanitation at bus terminals in the capital.

They said terminals in Kampung Rambutan and Pulogadung in East Jakarta were full of garbage and smelly, creating an unhealthy environment for people who used public facilities while waiting for buses.

Sanitation workers at the terminals admitted that they could not cope with the heaps of trash, which markedly increased a few weeks before the Idul Fitri holiday, as large crowds of passengers littered the terminals.

Kampung Rambutan terminal -- located on a 14-hectare plot, 8.7 hectares of which is designed for public facilities, including a waiting hall, offices, restaurants and toilets -- provides intercity buses that carry passengers to destinations in West and Central Java as well as cities on the island of Sumatra.

Pulogadung terminal is mainly for passengers going to Central and East Java cities.

Data from the terminal show that a few weeks before and after the Lebaran (local name for Idul Fitri) holiday, the terminal was thronged by about 25,000 travelers daily.

Some passengers at the Kambung Rambutan terminal said many people littered in the area because there were not enough waste bins and a lack of cleaning workers at the station.

Sunanto, who was waiting for a bus that would take him to Garut, a West Java city known for its clean environment, told The Jakarta Post that the city administration should have provided more dustbins and garbage collectors in anticipation of the sharp increase of passengers during Lebaran.

"The City Land Transportation Control Agency merely removes the garbage from the terminal to the parking lot nearby, and does not solve the problem of waste disposal," he remarked

Parno, a local garbage man, said he was ordered only to clean up the trash in the terminal and that he had no idea where the piles of garbage near the parking lot would be taken to.

"It is not easy to keep the area clean with all the passengers during the Lebaran holiday and many of them do not even bother to throw the waste into the waste bins," he said, complaining that more cleaning workers should have been employed during holiday.

Besides sanitation, another problem that raised passengers' concern was health.

A health officer at the terminal, Meilan Sihotang, said an average of 15 people were treated daily at the terminal's makeshift health center for dehydration, gastritis and diarrhea. The center was set up by the city administration with the help of several organizations to provide a health service for the public.

"Before Lebaran, when most people were fasting, we treated a lot of patients who suffered from dehydration and gastritis," Meilan said, adding that most passengers were not in good health and could not stand being in a messy crowd.

Meanwhile, officials at both terminals said that until Tuesday the number of inbound passengers exceeded that of travelers leaving the capital for their home towns.

A driver of an intercity bus said there were only 50 passengers leaving the capital compared to 70 arriving in the city. Another bus driver confirmed that his bus carried only 15 passengers to destinations in Central Java against 80 coming to Jakarta.

Both drivers expected the number of inbound passengers to reach its peak at the end of this week.(06)