Police question factory executives on pollution
JAKARTA (JP): The West Jakarta police have interrogated executives of a briefcase factory following the death of a woman and the hospitalization of four other people for respiratory problems.
"So far we have not reached any conclusions," the outgoing West Jakarta police chief, Lt. Col. Hari Pribadi, told The Jakarta Post yesterday.
On Wednesday, a 33-year-old housewife died in Kapuk sub- district in Cengkareng. Four others, including Agus and her seven-year-old son, fainted when they rushed to help her.
Yesterday three others passed out too, all residents of Gang Jamblang, a small flood-prone alleyway near the factory of PT Continental Panji Pratama. The three new patients were admitted to Atmajaya hospital in Pluit, where the others had been treated earlier.
All the victims live in plywood shacks along the back wall of the factory, and are believed to have inhaled lethal fumes emitted from waste water allegedly disposed of by company workers.
An on-duty doctor, Djumrad Hadi, said the patients were suffering from dizziness and nausea.
As of late yesterday the company director, Johan Iskandar, was still being questioned by police, along with chief technician Hadi Prabowo.
"We will take responsibility if our company is proven to have caused the victim's death," Johan said.
The factory building on Jl. Berdikari 39 produces office briefcases and suitcases of the brand "President" for export.
"According to preliminary investigations, the fumes should also have affected factory employees on duty at the time if they had really been lethal," Lt. Col. Hari said.
Health officials on the site had yet to determine whether the processing of aluminum for the products had anything to do with this incident.
The shacks, built in 1989, 14 years after the factory was built, are occupied by around 50 people, mostly construction workers and their kin from Serang, West Java.
The chief technician, Hadi, was quoted yesterday as saying that he had told two employees to wash the factory's waste water tub.
The area's residents told the Post that on the day in question the water coming out of the back wall of the factory "was boiling like battery water" and that the fumes were "indescribable."
Reports said the police have cordoned off the site.
Iman, the neighborhood community head, said complaints about the fumes cause dizziness and skin irritations, had been made to the management. The last complaint was in February.
"The management always says that pollution only occurs once in a while but we feel it twice a day almost daily," he said.
Officials from the city's environmental bureau, and others from the health agency visited the site and took water samples.
The head of the bureau, Aboejoewono Aboeprajitno, said a lack of ventilation around the factory's waste treatment plant may have caused the incident.
He said that according to a 1982 law the owner faces a year in prison -- or a Rp 1 million fine -- if proven guilty of causing the accident.
The chairman of the council's commission for development affairs, Bandjar Marpaung, said the company's operational permit should be revoked.
"Subdistrict heads should also step up the supervision of factories. They shouldn't be allowed to look the other way just because the owners pay them off with bribes." Bandjar said. (team)