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One dead, another injured in train-car collision
A train and a car collided at the railway crossing on Jl
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train and a car collided at the railway crossing on Jl. Administrasi Negara II in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, on Tuesday morning, killing a man and injuring his wife.
Tanah Abang Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Anom Setyadji said that the incident took place at 5:30 a.m. He added that the victims, identified as Japen Purba, 56, and Tetty Saragih, 51, were residents of Bekasi, West Java, and were riding in a Toyota Innova vehicle at the time of the accident.
'They were attempting to cross the tracks and enter the National Institute of Administration [LAN],' Anom told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Anom said that the cross bar at the railway crossing was out of order when the accident occurred.
'After checking conditions in the field, we found that the automatic cross bar was broken. It should have been repaired before something like this happened,' he said.
Jafar, a security officer at LAN who was guarding the railway crossing, said that the cross bar had been broken for more than four years. He said the state-owned railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) had refused to fix it because the crossing was considered illegal.
'They [KAI] do not even want to put their workers here. There are four people, including me, who are hired by LAN to guard the crossing,' he said.
The railway crossing separates the main road in Tanah Abang from LAN offices and residences.
Jafar said that during the accident a guard had waved a warning flag to alert vehicles that a train was
approaching.
'However, the driver ignored our warning and insisted on crossing. While he was crossing, the train hit the car from the left side,' he said.
KAI Operations Region (Daop) I spokesman, Agus Komarudin, said that KAI could not be blamed for the accident because it happened at an illegal crossing.
'The railway crossing does not have a permit and it is guarded by local people, not us,' he said.
Agus added that every railway crossing should have a permit from the Directorate General of Railways at the Transportation Ministry.
'It is not possible for KAI to guard every single legal and illegal railway crossing in the country,' he said.
Jakarta has unlicensed crossings where fatal accidents are known to occur. Often these crossings are guarded by volunteers who earn money through tips from passersby. (idb)
