City seeks younger dump truck drivers
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Are you aspiring to become a civil servant? If you applied to become a dump truck driver your dream may well come true.
A city health official said on Thursday that most dump truck drivers were getting old, and youngsters were hard to come by.
"We find it difficult to find civil servants who are willing to become dump truck drivers. That's why we have such old drivers now," said City Sanitation Agency head Rama Boedhi during a discussion on waste treatment modernization in Jakarta organized by the Warta Kota daily.
He said that at least two thirds of some 800 drivers, who are all civil servants, were aged 50 years and over, the rest being between 40 and 50, with only one being in his 30s.
"We are in dire need of younger drivers. Otherwise, we will put our dump trucks at higher risk of traffic accidents," he said, alluding to higher risks of aging drivers, due to their poorer vision and reflexes.
The need for younger drivers has become urgent, he said, as his agency plans to procure new dump trucks in order to gradually replace those that have become worn-out.
Without mentioning numbers or prices, he said that the new dump trucks were very expensive as they were equipped with in- built engines to compact waste.
The new truck will be able to squeeze 10 truck loads of waste into a single truck.
Currently, the administration has 700 dump trucks that daily transport 6,000 tons of waste from the capital to the dump site in Bantar Gebang in Bekasi.
"We cannot wait until the administration recruits new civil servants because this will take too long. Instead, we prefer to outsource the drivers from private companies this year," he said.
Meanwhile, councillor Sayogo Hendrosoebroto, who chairs commission D overseeing development affairs, welcomed the idea of hiring drivers from private companies.
"But the administration should be careful with hiring drivers from private companies. It has to anticipate the risks of drivers having accidents. Who will be responsible (for repairing the damage)?" Sayogo said on the sidelines of the discussion.