VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Feb. 5 - The Indonesian government is formulating strategies to strengthen COVID-19 handling, deputy chief of the COVID-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery Committee (KPC-PEN), Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, has said.

The strategies include launching a massive campaign on health protocols, developing a central isolation facility, accelerating the vaccination program, and limiting mobility, he added.

“We have to improve the strategy on COVID-19 handling to increase public discipline,” Pandjaitan, who is also the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment, said here during an online discussion on COVID-19 handling on Thursday.

The government, he said, has three primary targets in the fight against COVID-19 — reduce daily cases, lower mortality rate, and increase recovery rate.

The first strategy is encouraging change in public behavior through a massive health protocol campaign, and aggressive tracing and testing, the minister informed.

"We hope that dissemination of information and the campaign can be conducted massively involving various institutions, such as the Religious Affairs Ministry and the Education and Culture Ministry," he said.

The next strategy is developing a central isolation facility, Pandjaitan said.

"The use of Wisma Atlet in Greater Jakarta is the right policy, hence we can use it as an isolation center, reduce family clusters, and help overwhelmed hospitals," he stated.

The government is also encouraging provinces with the highest number of positive cases to provide a central isolation facility, he revealed.

"We will improve the management of medical treatment by ensuring adequate hospital capacity, medicines and health care equipment," he said.

Yet another strategy, he added, is accelerating the COVID-19 vaccination program, under which vaccines are being administered to medical workers, public service officers, vulnerable groups, and in priority regions with high positivity rates.

"Vaccination is still ongoing, we are targeting to reach 70 percent of herd immunity in 12 months," Pandjaitan stressed.

Reducing mobility is also crucial to control coronavirus transmission, he noted.

"Based on our experience, it will need mobility reduction of more than 30 percent to control the cases," he said.

Meanwhile, head of the Indonesian Epidemiology Association (PAEI), Hariadi Wibisono, said the source of most of the COVID-19 positive cases could not be detected.

"Therefore, we need to intensify the 3T moves — testing, tracing and treatment," he remarked.

The government should provide affordable and accessible COVID-19 testing and tracing that involves all elements of the society, he said. (Antaranews)

Feb. 5 - Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) Erick Thohir expressed hope that Indonesian BUMN companies would emerge as a global preference.

"I also hope that many more Indonesian state-owned companies would become preferences in the global business, taking into account the fact that competition is now open," Thohir noted in Jakarta, Thursday.

The BUMN minister commended the inclusion of Mandiri, BNI, and BRI into the Forbes ranking list along with Telkom.

"From the start, we, at the Ministry of BUMN, were keen that the transformation we conducted was based on the three aspects of accountability, transparency, and professionalism," he emphasized.

During the journey of transformation, Thohir expressed belief that the BUMN group should also be based on focus laid on its business as well as its long-term strategic plan after the COVID-19 pandemic.

"In accordance with the Ministry of BUMN’s roadmap, we also hope that BUMNs would go global," Minister Thohir stated.

Four BUMN -- PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk, PT Bank Mandiri (Persero) Tbk, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Persero) Tbk, and PT Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero) Tbk -- were included on the list of the world's largest public companies in the 2019 version of the business magazine Forbes.

Forbes released a list of the two thousand largest global public companies in the world in 2019. The companies selected are spread across 61 countries, with the criteria for the largest global public company referring to the size of market capitalization, sales or revenue, profit, and assets in 2018.

The international community’s recognition and praises for the performance of these BUMNs demonstrates the seriousness of BUMNs to unwaveringly realize their long-term vision as service providers and deliver optimal performance. (Antaranews)

Feb. 4 - The National Committee for Transportation Safety (KNKT) has continued its manual search for the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of the crashed Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182 in the waters off Seribu Islands.

"The search for the CVR memory has continued without the help of the underwater location beacon. So, we are searching for it ourselves on the seabed. That is the peculiar difficulty we are facing," KNKT chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said during a hearing with Commission V of the House of Representatives (DPR) in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The search for the CVR has been continued for the purpose of investigation, he informed.

A CVR plays an important role in recording voices from four canals in an airplane — voice from the pilot's microphone, voice from the co-pilot's microphone, voice from the cockpit and the reserved canal (cockpit and cabin interphone), he said.

"FDR and CVR are important components in an investigation since they record flight data such as time, altitude, speed, coordinates and so on," he added.

The flight data recorder (FDR) of SJ-182 was located on January 12, 2021, three days after the plane crashed.

"From the plane's log book, we did not find significant (data) of damage during the January 6-9, 2021 period," Tjahjono revealed.

Meanwhile, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said the search operation for the Sriwijaya Air flight was officially ended on January 21, 2021 in accordance with the rules.

He said the search for the CVR memory has continued as it was separated from its casing, which was retrieved on January 15, 2021.

The 13-day joint search operation for flight SJ-182 involved personnel from the Indonesian military, police, and institutions, among others. The joint operation was extended twice by three days each time.

More than 4,300 personnel, 63 vessels, and 15 airplanes were pressed into service for the joint operation.

The joint team collected 324 bags of human remains, 68 bags of small debris, and 55 bags of large debris from the crash site.

The team also retrieved the flight data recorder (FDR) on the fourth day of the search operation and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) casing on the seventh day of the search operation.

The debris of the crashed plane was handed to the KNKT, while the human remains were handed to the National Police's Disaster Victim Investigation (DVI) team.

The Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182, bearing the registration number PK-CLC, had lost contact on January 9, 2021 at 2:40 p.m. Western Indonesia time (WIB) shortly after take-off and crashed between Lancang Island and Laki Island, Thousand Islands, DKI Jakarta. The plane had taken off from Jakarta and was headed to Pontianak.

Based on the manifest, the plane was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members on board. Of the total passengers, 40 were adults, seven were children, and three were infants. (Antaranews)

Feb. 4 - Foreign Minister of Hungary Peter Szijjarto is expected to visit Indonesia soon and meet with his Indonesian counterpart to discuss setting up an investment fund, among other things, Hungarian Ambassador to Indonesia Judit Pach said.

“We are right now preparing for the Foreign Minister retreat to Indonesia, which will hopefully happen within the coming two weeks, and they will have a high-level bilateral meeting with the Foreign Minister of Indonesia, Retno Marsudi,” she informed during an exclusive interview with ANTARA on Wednesday.

However, the exact dates for the official visit have not been set yet as the embassy in Jakarta is still holding discussions with the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, she said, adding that one of the issues that will be on the agenda of the talk is related to the establishment of joint investment fund.

“How we could speed up the establishment of this (investment) fund, and concerning the exact project we haven't discussed yet, much of (the) projects (will be) definitely in the infrastructure (sector),” she noted.

In early 2020, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had made an official visit to Jakarta and met President Joko Widodo. During their meeting, the two leaders had agreed to establish a joint investment fund of about US$500 million.

"Right now we are still in discussion how to establish the fund [...] (since) establishing such a huge fund would take some time [...] both Indonesia and Hungarian sides came to little hold due to the COVID-19 situation, because we need to reshape resources," Pach added.

Bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and Hungary has been carried out in several sectors. For instance, in 2019, Hungary finished a huge water management project in 36 locations across Indonesia.

And just recently, Hungarian company Roatex won the tender for setting up an electronic payment system on Indonesian toll roads using multi-lane free flow (MLFF) technology. (Antaranews)