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Smokers have no place in North Jakarta
“I can’t smoke around here,” said a man, coming out of a house in Sunter Jaya, North Jakarta, while walking quite far away from his neighborhood where some children were playing hide and seek on Thursday
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“I can’t smoke around here,” said a man, coming out of a house in Sunter Jaya, North Jakarta, while walking quite far away from his neighborhood where some children were playing hide and seek on Thursday.
Only after passing a banner that read “Kawasan Tanpa Rokok” (smoke-free area) in neighborhood unit (RT) 013, community unit (RW) 001 did Rahman, not his real name, start puffing his cigarette.
Rahman and other residents in RT 013 have agreed to keep their residential area free of cigarette smoke. Smokers are not allowed to light their cigarettes in the open-air, let alone inside their houses.
“It came from the people’s initiative. We started with banning smokers from littering the ground with their cigarette butts, because many of us, mostly mothers, were tired of spotting cigarette ends all over the place,” RT 013 head Sugimin told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
“But then some people thought, ‘why don’t we just ban people from smoking?’ Not only would the ground be free of cigarette butts, the air would also be cleaner,” he added.
Before the agreement was made, most of the men among some residents there were smokers.
But for around five years, smokers like Rahman have had to walk and leave the kampung area every time they want to enjoy a cigarette. This inconvenience has meant that the number of smokers in the so-called Kampung Berseri (glowing kampung) has decreased by around 35 percent.
Asked whether there was a punishment for those who violated the rule, Sugimin said, “No, we prefer to trust each other. We agreed to make such a policy for the greater good, we should commit to it regardless of the consequence.”
In another neighborhood, Kampung Penas Tanggul in South Cipinang Besar, East Jakarta, the same policy was implemented two years ago, pushed by the fact that many children and adults got sick as a result of the high number of smokers in every house.
With the help of the Jakarta People’s Forum (FAKTA) in 2017, six Kampung Penas Tanggul youngsters visited Umbulharjo in Yogyakarta, a well-known pioneer smoke-free village. Back in their home kampung, they were inspired to initiate a smoke-free movement in the neighborhood.
Among the six people were Nobby Sail Andi Supu and Joko Sundoko. They said the women had established a unique social punishment that was an effective deterrent for smokers in the kampung: talking about their husband’s smoking habit to the neighbors.
One community in South Tangerang has had a smoke-free neighborhood for many years. The residents of the Serua Barokah housing complex in Serua subdistrict, Ciputat, agreed to call their area a kampung anti rokok (anticigarette kampung) in 1995.
A resident named Yudha Nur Hasan said the 1,000 residents from 400 families had agreed on certain social sanctions for those who smoke.
“We’ll reprimand them. The rules apply to all residents as well as guests,” the 39-year-old said as quoted by tribunnews.com.
Such smoking bans in public places in Jakarta are stipulated in Article 13 of City Bylaw No. 2/2005 on air pollution control.
“Public places and offices must be provided with a special place for smoking that is equipped with an exhaust fan so the smoke does not affect the health of nonsmokers,” it states in one of its articles.
As of today, most hospital, school and office buildings in the capital have put up “no smoking” signs. Other public places that have such a policy are restaurants and shopping malls, which usually provide a special place for smokers. However, in many cases, the rule cannot be strictly enforced, especially in outdoor areas.
