Ulma Haryanto

Indonesian Environment Agency, Swiss NGO Seek Legal Fix to Help Snub Out Smoking

ASwiss nonprofit is was working with Jakarta’s Environmental Management Agency to revise anti-smoking legislation to help make the capital’s public places smoke-free by 2011.

“At the moment the anti-tobacco regulation is only an article under the bylaw for air pollution control. We would also like to revise the existing regulation,” Dollaris Riauaty Suhadi, executive director of Swisscontact Indonesia Foundation, told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday.

With funding from a $361,000 grant from the Bloomberg Initiative to improve public health in Jakarta, Dollaris said the two organizations would seek to clarify aspects of the existing legislation.

A “smoke-free” area, Dollaris said, “is an area that not just prohibits people from smoking, but also precludes the selling and marketing of cigarettes.”

She added that smoke-free areas would include schools, places of worship, health facilities, playgrounds, public transport, public spaces and the workplace.

The anti-smoking bylaws, she said, were not deemed sufficient to deter smokers.

“Treating it like a crime would mean that there is going to be a trial process for smoking, which makes it complicated when all we want is to have a rule that would be easy to enforce and low-cost, but effective,” Dollaris said.

The capital’s environment agency and SIF are expecting to have completed an inspection of 780 city administration offices by April to check on the implementation of the smoking ban. The results will be submitted to Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo for further action.

Inspections of other public buildings will soon follow, and violators will be “name and shamed” on a public Web site, www.smokefreejakarta.or.id, Dollaris said.

The two-year project, managed by SIF and funded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s foundation, is aimed at achieving a smoke-free Jakarta by 2011.

“We chose to work with enforcing [existing] smoke-free legislation, since we believe that it will be more effective than anti-tobacco campaigns,” she said. “I think anti-tobacco campaigns will never beat the marketing efforts of cigarette companies.”

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