World No Tobacco Day 2011

Poster :  Courtesy of World Heath Organization (WHO)

No Smoking In Public Buildings

Smoking cigarettes in public places is one of the worst enemy of the government of Jakarta, beside traffic jams and floods.

In 2005, they issued a regulation that forbid smoking inside certain public places like Religions places,  Schools, Hospitals, etc. Other public places like Shopping Malls are required special places for smoking. Although said regulation threatened violators with Fine, however due to weak law enforcement, we often see people smoking inside the mall.

Due to this fact, this year the government issued a tougher regulation (click) that totally forbid smoking inside public buildings, which sanctioned not only with usual form of punishment like Paying Fine, but also with public sanction i.e. announcement of their names in the mass media

Several groups of people i.e. Indonesian Tobacco Farmers Association, Kretek Cigarette Community, etc. alleged that this new regulation shows that the Jakarta government have surrendered to pressures of foreign anti-tobacco activists Swiss Contact.

This allegation was denied by the Governor of Jakarta Fauzi Bowo who said that the new regulation was made to accommodate the aspirations of Jakarta residents, therefore free from foreign intervention.

Inspite of the tough regulation, Smoking Rooms still exists in Jakarta government offices a.o. Office of the Mayor of Central Jakarta (click).

I hope that this new regulation would be enforced consistently, otherwise it would be as useless just like the  previous one.

Image : Courtesy of No Tobacco.