Solution to pollution

It does not take a pharmacist or health expert to work out that there are serious problems with the air in Jakarta. Just ask any of the commuters who have to wait for a bus down at the Cawang interchange.

Congratulations to Governor Suryadi Soedirdja on his office's decision to phase out the dreaded smoke spewing bajaj and Made Djaja's environmental team on his consideration for using unleaded gasoline or gas in vehicles (The Jakarta Post, March 30, 1996).

I have an additional idea for solving "congestion" that I wish to share with the "Blue Skies" committee.

Buses also tend to spew forth great black clouds and occasionally catch fire, but are an absolute necessity for many commuters. If these derelicts of transportation were to be up- graded or replaced with a modern, cleaner fleet of well maintained buses, I'm sure we'd see better results in air conditions. Such a project would no doubt be a very costly exercise. However, perhaps the finical burden should be born by all commuters. The buses could be provided with special transit lanes to encourage more motorists to use them. Furthermore, motorists choosing a private mode of transportation could pay a small fee for forfeiting the use of buses.

It seems to me that in the face of such enormous, obvious problems in this society, a lot of the individuals directly responsible just sigh and hope that the problem will go away eventually. It really doesn't take that much to fix a broken muffler.

Good on you to the people making efforts to educate and discipline those individuals and good luck to the teams who are taking steps to tackle the problem.

ANDI BENSON

Jakarta