Jamsostek to set up 14 health centers

Up to 14 trauma centers will be set up by the end of this year, in a bid to provide better health services to workers, P.T. Jaminan Sosial Tenaga Kerja (Jamsostek) Director Ahmad Djunaedi said on Thursday.

Speaking after inaugurating the Rungkut Trauma Center in Surabaya, East Java, Djunaedi revealed that another 25 trauma centers would be established in 2003.

"We have started establishing trauma centers only in the second semester of 2002. We cannot do much yet, but we are planning to have up to 14 centers by the end of 2002," Djunaedi told Antara in Surabaya on Thursday.

A trauma center is a unit of the health service, especially dedicated to workers who have an accident while on duty.

"For 2003, Jamsostek is planning to establish up to 25 trauma centers in different areas," he said without revealing the value of money allocated to set up the centers.

He said the centers could be established without necessarily setting up its own buildings. "Just cooperate with existing hospitals or polyclinics," he said.

The Rungkut Trauma Center, which was established in cooperation with PT SIER at the Rungkut Industrial Zone, was the second so far, the first being located in Semarang, the provincial capital of Central Java.

Djunaedi said the centers were set up in response to calls for Jamsostek to build hospitals for workers.

"Jamsostek is still studying the possibility of constructing its own hospitals for the workers," he said, adding that the ministry for manpower and transmigration had on several occasions called for the establishment of hospitals for workers.

"It (building hospitals) is still being discussed by Jamsostek's technical team as it is not easy to establish a hospital, it requires a lot of consideration and cost, especially establishing a hospital is beyond Jamsostek's main business core," he said.