Jakarta’s city bus management company, PT TransJakarta, says it’s going to increase security measures at its bus stations following the twin suicide bombing at the Kampung Melayu bus station last week that killed three police officers and wounded 12 others.
One measure that the company is set to implement is the installation of metal detectors at all of TransJakarta’s bus stations.
“We are going to install metal detectors, but it’s going to be installed in phases in all stations,” said PT TransJakarta First Director Budi Kaliwono, as quoted by Kompas yesterday.
Budi added that metal detectors are going to be installed in some stations starting this week, though he did not identify which ones.
This plan has been met with skepticism online, with many netizens saying that installing metal detectors is nothing but a reactionary measure and perhaps an unnecessary one, as blasts outside but near a TransJakarta bus station – which are mostly constructed out of glass and thin sheets of metal – can still do a lot of damage. Furthermore, many have argued that metal detector security checkpoints would create queueing chaos at already crowded bus stations.
But Budi said the added security measures will go beyond metal detectors. For one, he said that TransJakarta is going to maximize the use of their existing 1,500 CCTV units in 238 bus stations to spot any suspicious activities (which makes one wonder if they hadn’t been doing that prior to last week’s attack…).
Last, but not least, Budi said that there is going to be one or two military or police officers guarding every single TransJakarta bus station from now on.
Reader Interactions