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)