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n a bid to free public areas from cigarette smoke, the Jakarta administration is planning to send warning letters to the management of 52 buildings for failing to obey an anti-smoking bylaw that has been in effect for two months.

Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) head of law enforcement Ridwan Panjaitan said Tuesday the administration had received complaints from the public about smoking areas in buildings.

“At first, we will give them warning to close down their smoking rooms. We are giving them one month to do so,” Ridwan said.

However, Ridwan refused to name the buildings, saying the administration was giving building management time to obey the law.

“If, within a month, they still refuse to close down the smoking rooms in their buildings, we will announce the buildings to the media,” he said.

Ridwan said further disobedience would result in a temporary shutdown of the establishment.

“For example, if a restaurant in a shopping mall still allows people to smoke we will temporarily shut the restaurant down,” he said.

The final sanction would be a business permit revocation, he added.

The 2010 city bylaw on smoke-free areas stipulates that smoking is not allowed inside buildings.

The bylaw amended a 2005 bylaw that stated that smoking sections must be separate from non-smoking areas.

According to survey results announced earlier this month, the majority of office and commercial buildings in Jakarta have banned smoking and scrapped their smoking sections.

The survey conducted by the Swisscontact Indonesia Foundation in collaboration with a number of NGOs found 72 percent of the buildings surveyed had implemented the ban.

The survey was conducted between Nov. 1 and Dec. 14 of this year on 107 buildings in the city, including 53 government buildings, 30 private establishments and 24 commercial buildings.

Assistant to the city secretary for public welfare Mara Oloan Siregar said on Tuesday a number of city agencies have been checking for smoking rooms and smoking bans as a part of routine inspections.

The agencies included the manpower agency, the tourism and culture agency, the health agency and municipal offices.

“A simple method of obeying the law would be if building management announced that smoking was banned in the building with the appropriate banners and signs,” Mara said.

He also said that the administration would ask the management of Bung Karno soccer stadium in Senayan, Central Jakarta, to abide by the smoke-free bylaw.

“We will ask the management to ban spectators from smoking inside the stadium during the ASEAN Football Federation Cup final match,” Mara said, referring to the match scheduled on Dec. 29th between Indonesia and Malaysia.

Last week, the manpower agency reported it had closed smoking rooms in 50 buildings run by private companies since the beginning of November of this year. Many of the buildings were operated by automotive and garment companies in North Jakarta.

According to the agency, only 40 percent of 29,000 company buildings have complied with the bylaw as of November.

Jakarta residents are advised to report smoking ban violations to the administration at www.pedulijakarta.com.

The city has received a total of 149 reports in the past three months.