Smoking continues despite decree

Many smokers in the city keep puffing away even though smoking has dire effects on non-smokers as well.

One executive, Heru (not his real name), said he continued to smoke even though his habit made his secretary sick.

“My current secretary complains to me about my smoking as she often feels dizzy after arriving home from work. It’s hard for me not to smoke in my office. I can’t work or think well without smoking cigarettes,” he said.

Heru’s office on Jl. Daan Mogot in West Jakarta has a closed ventilation system with centralized cooling.

“My former secretary decided to resign when she got pregnant as she was worried about the effect of the cigarette smoke on her baby,” Heru said.

His office building did not have any smoking rooms, and he was reluctant to leave his office on the sixth floor to go outside and smoke.

“I have a heavy workload and don’t want to waste my time going down to the first floor,” he said.

The 49-year-old is not alone. His colleagues and friends from other offices do the same thing for the same reasons.

Bambang, 51, smokes in his office in the Pulogadung industrial estate in East Jakarta.

“If only there was a smoking area on each floor. I would probably smoke there so I don’t make others suffer from my smoke,” Bambang said, adding that some of his subordinates smoked in the bathroom, even though the restrooms and office shared the same centralized cooling system.

The World Health Organization reported that there were 65 million smokers in Indonesia last year.

In an effort to reduce the number of smokers, Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo signed a decree on May 6 banning smoking inside buildings, which stipulated that people who want to smoke must do so outside. As a result, buildings are no longer allowed to have indoor smoking areas.

The city administration threatened to announce the names of buildings to the media and even revoke the permits of building managements that violated the decree multiple times.

A survey by the Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD), the Swisscontact Indonesia Foundation and the University of Indonesia Demography Institute showed smoking rooms in buildings did not prevent smoke from infiltrating non-smoking areas.

A recent observation by The Jakarta Post of several sites with smoking rooms confirmed the survey’s findings.

The meeting hall of a hotel on Jl. Sudirman in South Jakarta provided a smoking corner — without partitions — for its guests to smoke.

An employee who preferred to remain anonymous said: “We don’t have a special room to smoke in this hall, but [smokers] can do so in the corner near the toilet.”

“Other guests who happen to be in their rooms usually complain to us, but they don’t say anything to the smokers,” she told the Post. She added they could not admonish the smokers as the place was intentionally prepared for them.

BPLHD law enforcement head Ridwan Pandjaitan urged people to inform smokers about the decree because there were not enough officers to curb smoking in the entire city.

“We also hope that building managers will establish complaint centers as soon as possible for people to report smoking in forbidden places,” he said. (rch)