Overpass collapse must be a lesson: Soeharto
Overpass collapse must be a lesson: Soeharto
JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto said yesterday all parties must learn from the collapse of the Grogol overpass which killed three workers and injured 18 others on Friday.
"Face the problem appropriately to avoid further negligence," Soeharto said, as quoted by Minister of Public Works Radinal Moochtar.
Radinal met with the President yesterday to report on, among other things, the accident at an entrance to the Grogol-Pluit toll road.
"If proved guilty of violating work procedures the contractor will surely face legal sanctions," Radinal said, adding that the Ministry expects its investigation team to come up with results in 10 days.
The contractors of the overpass, technically called the Grogol loop ramp project, are the South Korean Hanbo General Contractor and the Indonesian PT Bumi Karsa.
The consultants for the project include Japan-based PCI & Yec and the Indonesian PT Bandung Industrial Engineering Consultant (BIEC).
A source questioned the involvement of the consultants, PT BIEC and another company, PT INDEC, whose managements are known to have close ties to the ministry of public works.
The ministry's secretary general, Ruslan Diwiryo, said Monday that all the contractors, consultants and supervisors (from the Public Works Ministry) should be properly informed of all "strategic procedures" of the construction process.
But removal of bracing may be a routine detail which is not usually covered, he said.
Yesterday the Ministry of Manpower also formed an investigation team on the accident.
Suwarto, the Director General of Industrial Relations and Labor Standards said that based on labor laws, the team will check preventative safety measures for workers and whether all employees are covered by social security insurance.
At the site workers had told reporters they had not been given any safety equipment.
In a related development, a noted construction consultant, Wiratman Wangsadinata, said the stagers' poor condition remains the likeliest cause of the accident.
"Apparently none of the parties involved (in the project) were aware of the stagers' condition," he told The Jakarta Post.
Like Ruslan, Wiratman said this is a routine step which may have not been reported to all parties in the project.
"What probably happened was that all parties assumed the others had checked the stagers, or the feeling might have prevailed that checking was not needed given the high reputation of the parties involved," Wiratman said.
However, he said, the loop ramp was not a routine project.
"We do not have many loop ramps of 500 tons," he said.
On Monday Ruslan ruled out the possibility of technical faults in the stagers, as he said the project owner and the consultant would have checked the structures.
Ruslan said the selection of the contractor itself was based on a strong recommendation from the Japan-based Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF), which provided the loans for the project.
Wiratman said that although the government assumes that the OECF conducts strict selection, it should further screen the companies.
To avoid accidents, public projects should be required to employ an independent professional quality controller, as is the rule in Singapore, Wiratman said.
Also, checks and rechecks within internal mechanisms should become standard procedure for consultants, he believed.
"The fact is that although the court will try and convict the parties found responsible, settlements (in other countries) have never been satisfactory to any party," Wiratman said. (anr)