TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Victims of 2015 Saudi crane accident to be compensated
Tragedy: People gather on Sept
Change Size
T
ragedy: People gather on Sept. 12, 2015, in front a crane that collapsed the previous day at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca.(AFP/STR)
For nearly four years, 40-year-old Erni Sampedosen has had to toil away, working while raising her three children on her own in rural South Sulawesi, ever since a fatal accident in Saudi Arabia robbed her of her husband, Darwis
Rahim Codde.
The couple was set to begin the haj when on Sept. 11, 2015, a construction crane collapsed at the Al-Haram Grand Mosque complex in Mecca, killing 111 and injuring hundreds of pilgrims from various countries.
Twelve Indonesians died and another 49 were injured in the accident. Erni was among those lucky enough to only suffer a wound to the back of her head, but her husband died instantly at the scene, part of his skull crushed under the weight of the crane.
Now, she finally has a reason to be hopeful. The Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh recently announced that victims from Indonesia would be the first to receive compensation from Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, making good on a commitment he had made to give 1 million riyal (US$266,666) to every deceased or permanently disabled victim and 500,000 riyal for the injured.
According to an embassy statement received on Monday, representatives from the Saudi foreign ministry handed over $6.13 million in checks to the embassy in late August.
Erni will be receiving two checks; one for her and another to compensate for her husband’s death.
She said she had not heard of any official notice from authorities, save for one time earlier in February, when the Indonesian Embassy had her sign a power of attorney statement to disburse the funds through them.
“Hopefully it won’t just be wishful thinking, an empty promise or that [it will only be dealt with] at the level of government, but will soon be disbursed and handed over to [victims],” she told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Shedding tears, she said the money would be used — God willing — in part to fund construction of a mosque in her village in dedication to her late husband, while the rest will be used for the children’s education and capital for a small business.
Other victims were also upbeat about news.
Hasrah, 49, said she had heard information about the disbursement of funds through a group on social media that gathered 36 victims and their family members.
She had been on the lookout for information after her husband, 54-year-old Subandi bin Ahmad Sarbini, a police officer in Maros, South Sulawesi, was left paralyzed in his left hand due to the crane accident.
"I have asked someone at the Religious Affairs Ministry [branch] in Maros, who said the funds will be handed over directly to the victims, but they did not yet know when and where," Hasrah said.
According to the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh, the Religious Affairs Ministry will coordinate further with the Foreign Ministry to finalize the compensation process.
According to Agus Maftuh Abegebriel, Indonesia’s Ambassador to the Saudi kingdom, the funds were originally supposed to be disbursed pending an inheritance fatwa by the Religious Affairs Ministry, but King Salman went ahead and handed over the checks.
Saudi Arabia takes great pride in its role as custodian of Islam’s holiest site. It previously named 13 suspects liable in the fatal crane accident, but a court ruled in 2017 that there was no criminal element involved, leaving victims ineligible to demand diyyat (blood money).
Compensation from the crane crash quickly became a routine item raised in Saudi Arabia’s engagements with Indonesia, the world’s largest sender of haj pilgrims, with numerous diplomatic notices sent at various levels.
Riyadh began renovations to expand Al-Haram in 2013 and cut back the number of pilgrims who could perform the haj every year over safety reasons related to construction around the mosque. Indonesia’s haj quota at the time was reduced to 168,800, although King Salman gradually increased the quota to 231,000 as of April this year.
Hailing from the world's biggest Muslim-majority country, many Indonesians have to wait for years — and in some cases decades — before they can go on the haj, a mandatory religious duty for all able-bodied Muslims that must be carried out at least once in a lifetime.
Jakarta continues to lobby the Saudi kingdom to increase its haj quota to meet the demands of Indonesia’s growing middle class.
Yon Machmudi, the director of research and education at the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Indonesia (UI), said the problem in dealing with Saudi Arabia was that every decision was made by the royal family, including disbursement for the compensation.
“The nature of Saudi politics is that it’s a dynasty kingdom, where all decisions are made unilaterally; there is no binding legal umbrella,” he said on Wednesday. (tjs)
