Police offer escort service JP/ /Across

Police offer free escorts

JAMBI: Jambi Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Bambang Sudarisman urged businesspeople to use a police escort when depositing or withdrawing large sums of money from the bank.

"The police have deployed officers to escort bank customers who want to deposit or withdraw large sums of money from the bank," Bambang said on Thursday.

Robberies targeting individual bank customers are more common in Indonesia than robberies of the banks themselves.

Many of the victims have worked for companies that have a regular schedule for withdrawing and depositing money in the bank.

Bambang said bank customers were easy prey for criminals who stake out banks and watch customers make their transactions.

Making use of police escorts would reduce the number of robberies of bank customers, the officer said.

However, he said only a few people had made use of the service, which he said was free of charge.

Asked what steps one should take if officers refused to provide an escort, he said: "Report the officer to the police precinct, and if that doesn't work report it directly to me." -- Antara

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JP/ /

Illegal miners do damage with mercury

BENGKULU, Bengkulu: Illegal miners in the Bengkulu regency of Rejang Lebong are damaging the environment and putting their own health at risk with the excessive use of mercury, a local official said on Thursday.

The head of the local Environmental Impact Management Agency, Lumban Sitorus, said miners used mercury to separate valuable minerals like gold from rocks and dirt.

Illegal miners in the village of Napal Putih in Rejang Lebong are using dangerous levels of mercury, he said.

He said some of the miners used 40 times the amount of mercury needed, then dumped the chemical and the waste rocks into a nearby river or just left it lying on the ground.

The miners also handle the mercury without gloves, and Lumban said that over the long term direct contact with mercury could disrupt blood circulation, damage the nervous system and cause cancer.

An illegal gold miner in Napal Putih acknowledged that he knew very little about the dangers of mercury.

"We mine like the people before us mined," he said.

He said some of his colleagues suffered from different illnesses, but he did not think they were related to the use of mercury.

Despite the threat illegal mining poses to the environment, the government has done little to curb the practice.

Illegal mining has flourished since 1998 when the economic crisis led people to encroach onto the mining areas of companies. Many of these illegal miners are now believed to be backed by local politicians and financed by businesspeople in Jakarta. -- Antara