Train company on the wrong track?

With a spate of fatal accidents this year and perennial complaints about poor service, state-owned railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (PT KAI) is facing calls to put its house in order. The Jakarta Post's Emmy Fitri examines the woes besetting the company.

JAKARTA (JP): Every morning hundreds of people risk their lives on their way to school or to the office.

Their mode of transport is to sit precariously on roofs of trains careening through the city. It is unquestionably dangerous, but it has become an everyday sight for Jakarta residents over the years.

Thousands of people in Greater Jakarta rely on trains as the fastest and cheapest public transportation means.

With only Rp 600, they can go from the heart of the city to as far as Bogor or Serpong. The fare for express trains is Rp 2,500. In rush hours, the trains are packed. Getting into the train itself is a struggle as the passengers jostle for space.

"I like taking trains because it saves a lot of time," said Lina, a small-scale trader who lives in Bintaro, Tangerang.

The train takes only a half hour to get to downtown Jakarta; if she takes a bus, it will take at least two hours.

"But during rush hours, it's so difficult to get a space there. On the other day, I almost fell because somebody pushed me while we were trying to get in."

She also complained about the poor facilities in the economy- class trains, which are showing their age. There are no fans, let alone air conditioners, the windows are broken, and it is dark at night.

Her biggest complaint, however, is the limited number of trains.

The problems, including the fatal accidents, have fueled demands that PT KAI improve its services and professionalism for a public crying out for an inexpensive but comfortable ride.

Agus Pambagio from the Indonesian Consumer Foundation (YLKI) said there must be restructuring of the poor management in the company for it to meet a new double function of performing its services to the public and gaining a profit.

The railway company acknowledges the problems.

"The passengers in Greater Jakarta trains really look like tinned sardines," company spokesman Gatot Wibowo said.

Adding new trains to ease the problem is a hard proposition.

According to Gatot, the company invited investors to help boost services and improve the condition of the aging, dilapidated infrastructure.

He said the problem was that investment in the sector was costly and unappealing.

"For a unit of a train, an investor needs at least Rp 80 billion. And if it operates in Greater Jakarta taking daily commuters, it would take roughly 40 years to gain a return on the initial investment."

He admitted that the condition of economy-class trains and the infrastructure, such as the telecommunications equipment, was the same as 10 years ago.

"We face a lot of problems and we will work on them one by one. It's a mission impossible to improve the bad services and poor infrastructure at once."

The company's priority is to improve the service of profit- making trains, such as the first-class cars connecting Jakarta with Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Semarang and Surabaya. The profitable trains subsidize the other trains; only 28 percent of the firm's 116 trains earn profits.

"It (the company) is like a knife with two blades, but one of them is dull," Gatot said.

PT KAI is also under pressure from its employees, who want better salaries and welfare.

Train drivers say they are required to be alert all the time and take on the huge and uneasy responsibility of hundreds of lives in their hands. They say their meager compensation is compounded by exhaustion from the demanding job.

"We want the management to pay more attention to our welfare," one of the drivers said in a recent informal meeting with transportation and telecommunications minister Agum Gumelar.

A train driver has to work for eight hours per day; some drivers, like those on inter-city trains, work even longer hours.

Accidents

The company's workers, especially the drivers, are often blamed for the train accidents. This year alone there were 12 fatal accidents throughout the country and dozens of other minor incidents.

The recent fatal collision between a Semarang-bound Tawangjaya II occurred at about 6:30 a.m. in the village of Ketanggan, Batang, some 100 kilometers west of Semarang. A preliminary investigation revealed that human error was behind the accident.

Sixteen people died after the train driver of the passenger train reportedly ignored signals from the nearby railway station to halt to allow the freight train to pass.

A train driver said that his job required full obedience to the regulations and operation procedures, or else fatal accidents would be likely.

The 55-year-old man, who operates on the Jakarta-Bogor diesel train route, said there was no reward and punishment system in the company. He said many other drivers often ignored the regulations and procedures but were rarely disciplined for their transgressions.

He said the problem was there was no incentive for them to work professionally.

"But if we do work well, there is no difference as we will get nothing except our regular salary," he said.

The average monthly salary of a longtime train driver is between Rp 700,000 to Rp 800,000.

The driver did not want to disclose his salary. "It's too small. I have four children to feed, three of them are in school."

But he was modest about his risky job, saying that anyone could do it if they were well trained.

"I'm a junior high school graduate and have no skills for other jobs. My late father was also a train driver -- it's common that most of us (in PT KAI) are the products of KKN," he said, referring to the Indonesian acronym for corruption, collusion and nepotism.