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n an attempt to minimize sexual harassment on trains, PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) is to launch 20 carriages for women travelling the Jakarta-Bogor route Thursday.

The launch of 10 series of the carriages will be held at Depok train station, Greater Jakarta, at 10 a.m., one series consists of eight railway wagons, two of which are for women only.

“The two carriages for women will be at the first and the last of the series, while six carriages in between are unisex,” KAI Jakarta secretary Makmur Syaheran told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He added the company would localize the queue for women’s railway wagons and it would also provide a conductress.

Makmur said for the first step the special carriages for women would only serve the express train, but the company would provide the carriages for all services for all routes within Jakarta and its satellite cities soon.

“This is part of our commitment to improve our services to our passengers especially women,” said Makmur.

He said even though PT KAI did not receive many complaints from women passengers regarding sexual harassment, he was quite sure many of them prefer not to report it. “We want women passengers to feel more comfortable and safer travelling with trains. We hope they no longer feel awkward breast feeding their babies because they are in unisex carriages,” he said.

In some train stations there have been banners informing passengers about the upcoming women carriages.

This plan is welcomed by women passengers, who think that will make them feel comfortable using trains, the only fast public transportation in town. Nia, 28, a Kalibata resident said it was about time PT KAI launched women carriages considering trains were usually packed.

She expected the service would soon expand to the economy-class train, because that was the service she thought needed improvement the most.

“We need to feel more comfortable and safer as many perverts, not to mention pickpockets, swarm about in the economy train,” she said.

A similar view came from Ayu Trisnawati, 18, who said the economy class was where the sexual harassments and pickpockets were prone to take place. “Yesterday I almost become a victim of pick pocketing,” said the student of Gunadarma University in South Jakarta.

She said she would now use express train even though it cost her much more than economy class.

“I better pay Rp 11,000 [US$1] for an express train knowing that my safety is better guaranteed than paying Rp 1,500 for the economy class but prone to being a victim of crime or sexual harassment.”

A criminologist and activist from the University of Indonesia, Purnianti, said that separating female and male passengers was not the right solution for sexual harassment issues.

“Even if men and women are separated in public transportation, as long as men do not respect women as humans and women still feel inferior to men, making them afraid to shout out or report harassment, the separation will be useless,” she said.

Therefore rather than separating female and male passengers, she said, it would be better if both sexes improved their respect toward each other, and for women to have the courage to humiliate men who had harassed them.