CITY TO COMPLY WITH COURT RULING, STRENGTHEN SMOKING BAN

The Jakarta administration will comply with the Constitutional Court ruling that requires building owners to provide smoking rooms, scrapping the ban against the rooms in a gubernatorial decree.

Governor Fauzi Bowo, however, said that the city vowed to strengthen efforts to uphold the smoking ban a regulated in a bylaw.

“ we will not stop our efforts in upholding the smoking ban as mandated by the bylaw. We will boost our effort and we will also seek help from NGOs to help monitor our effort,” Fauzi said.

The plaintiff wanted the word “may” to be screpped from aclause that reads “workplaces and public places may provide special rooms for smoking”. The court granted the request.

As a consequence of the ruling, the Jakarta administration will be forced to annul its 2010 gubernatorial decree prohibiting smokers fromlighting up indoors and in smoking rooms.

Statistics show tobacco consumption has grown by 26 percent over the last 15 years, placing Indonesia among the worlds three largest tobacco consumers. Data from 2008 revealed that one-third of the countrys 237 million people smoke and the number of adolescent taking up smoking is on the rise.

The National Commission for Tobacco Control notes that the number of smokers in Indonesia reached 80 million people in 2010, the thirdhighest worldwide after China and India. Despite international pressure, Indonesia is among the few countries in the world that have neither signed nor ratified the World Health Organization ( WHO ) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ( FCTC ).