Garuda Assists Aid Workers: Jakarta, Indonesia

By Wombat | May 30th, 2006 | 2 Comments »

State airlines Garuda Indonesia and Merpati pledged Monday to give free rides to aid and rescue workers bound for the quake-stricken province of Yogyakarta.

President director of Garuda Indonesia Emirsyah Satar said free seats were available for professional aid workers on Garuda’s 12 daily flights bound for Yogyakarta and East Java’s Surakarta, the closest city to the quake-hit area with an international airport.

Emirsyah told the House of Representatives Commission V on transportation and public works that Garuda planes would also have space available in cargo holds for disaster aid.

Rescue workers needed to register at Garuda counters in the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport to get the free seats, he said.

Garuda was also seeking permission from the Transportation Ministry to schedule more flights to Yogyakarta to help increase aid deliveries, he said.

Domestic airline Merpati has also started humanitarian efforts for quake victims.

Merpati president director Hotasi Nababan said workers at the company’s regional office in Makassar, South Sulawesi, would collect aid from donors in east Indonesia before flying it to Yogyakarta.

Hotasi said the airline also had a Fokker-100 on a standby at Soekarno-Hatta to carry aid, paramedics and rescue workers from Jakarta. The plane would leave at 6.30 p.m. every day and would pick up rescue workers on a first-come first-serve basis, he said.

Yogyakarta’s Adi Sucipto Airport, which was badly damaged by the 6.3-magnitude earthquake, was opened for commercial and humanitarian flights early Monday morning after being shut over the weekend.

Meanwhile, national airport operator company PT Angkasa Pura II is working with police to apprehend scalpers who are jacking up ticket prices to Yogyakarta.

Since Saturday, the company has caught 26 scalpers at Soekarno-Hatta and handed them over to the police, company spokesman M. Wasfan told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Scalper activity at the airport intensified when thousands of worried relatives began flocking to the domestic terminal during the weekend after news of Saturday’s earthquake spread.

Wasfan said airport authorities had also launched a investigation into claims that airline officials were cooperating with scalpers by issuing them “blank” tickets without the prices printed on them.

Scalpers have been offering standard Rp 500,000 (US$55) Jakarta-Yogyakarta tickets for up to Rp 2 million since the quake.

Emirsyah said to combat the scalpers, Garuda was requiring would-be passengers to produce their identity cards when buying tickets.

M. Taufiqurrahman and Multa Fidrus The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Tangerang