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resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo gathered his Cabinet members and the heads of relevant agencies in a meeting on Monday, during which he called for his administration, particularly the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), to improve the nation’s disaster-mitigation measures, ranging from better early detection systems to disaster education at schools.

“We must ensure that early warning systems are well-organized so that the public will know [what to do when disaster strikes] and we can minimize the number of casualties,” Jokowi said.

It was Jokowi’s second instruction this year after he opened the first Cabinet meeting of 2019 last Monday — at which he revealed he had allocated more funds for mitigation and disaster education — and the first after he swore in new BNPB head Lt. Gen. Doni Monardo last Wednesday.

In the meeting, Doni went as far as to ask Jokowi to order military personnel to guard new disaster early detection devices — to be procured by the BNPB — in tsunami-prone areas and regions with active fault lines.

“I have proposed to the President that the detection systems must be treated like national facilities and guarded by the members of the Indonesian Military [TNI],” Doni told reporters on Monday.

“If the detection systems do not function properly, people living in coastal areas won’t be informed and when a tsunami occurs; we would have more casualties.”

He said many existing detection systems installed across the country no longer functioned properly because they were damaged by people or had deteriorated as a result of the weather.