Hi folks, we are officially leaving the tumultuous Year of the Rat behind and welcoming the Year of the Ox. For those of you who celebrate, Xin Nian Kuai Le.
On the news front, last week proved to be a wet-ish week with heavy rains triggering landslides and flooding in the Greater Jakarta Area. Meanwhile, the pandemic is still raging and the government seems to be struggling to get people tested and vaccinated.
Here Comes the Flood
Several places in the Greater Jakarta Area were flooded on Monday. In the capital city, 150 neighborhoods were inundated in water between 40-270cm deep after heavy rains caused the Ciliwung and Sunter rivers to surge. Meanwhile, 94 locations in Bekasi city and 12 districts in Bekasi regency were flooded. In Bogor regency, heavy rains triggered landslides and floods in 16 districts.
In northern coast of Central Java, several regencies and cities have been battling with devastating floods since the week before, including the provincial capital Semarang. While the floods in the Greater Jakarta Area were fast to recede, that was not the case in Central Java with some areas being inundated for days.
In Pekalongan city, several social affairs agency officials were reprimanded after they were found to be lounging & karaoke-ing while several flood victims went to their office to seek for yet-to-be distributed aid.
Active Cases Down
Over the course of one week, the number of active Covid-19 cases went from 176k to 159K as there have been more recoveries than additional cases. But, the number of people tested appeared to be smaller than the week before. Fewer than 50,000 people were tested this weekend with more than 15,600 positive cases over two days, giving us a positive rate of 35.5% on Saturday and 27.8% on Sunday.
The government has also been slow when it comes to vaccinating people as well. Between Feb 7 and Feb 13, only 276,008 people were vaccinated for the first time, including an Instagram influencer by the name of Helena Lim. Jakarta deputy governor Ahmad Riza Patria said Helena ended up in the queue by stating that she is a drugstore employee (she isn’t). Riza said an investigation is underway.
Vaccinations Way Behind Schedule
With a target of vaccinating 181.5 million Indonesians in 18 months, the government should be inoculating 330,000 people per day and we couldn’t even hit that number all of this week.
Here’s some math for you. We started vaccinating on Jan 13 and as of Feb 13, 1,060,326 people have received their first jab. 1,060,326 people/31 days = 34,204 people/day. 181,554,465 people/34,204 = 5,307 days = 14.5 years. At the current rate this whole vaccination thing will be done in 2035.
The government is acknowledging the problem and plans to do something about it. TNI chief Hadi Tjahjanto said the military already has 1,008 licensed vaccinators and is training 10,000 more to aid the vaccination program. This, combined with more vaccines on the way, hopefully it’ll speed up the process significantly.
Sriwijaya Air Crash
The National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) announced on Feb 10 its initial findings on to the crash of SJ182 on Jan 9, 2021. Investigators discovered "anomalies" in the plane's auto-throttle system. Before the crash, the system trimmed down the power of its left engine, but not the right. This created a thrust imbalance shortly before the crash.
The KNKT is still investigating how the pilots responded to the problem. Pilots should in theory be able to switch the system off and control the throttles manually. A plane can even stay airborne with one engine completely off.
The committee also found that the same plane experienced the same issue on Jan 3 and Jan 4. Both times, the issue did not result in any incident. The auto-throttle system is not vital, which is why regulation states that it is okay not to immediately fix a malfunctioning auto-throttle system. The system was fixed on Jan 5, four days before the plane crashed..
This is still the preliminary investigation and the KNKT refused to say that the issue was definitely what cause of the crash. The committee is scheduled to publish another update in five months time.
20 Year Peace at Risk
The murder of a 20 year old Dayak woman by a 21 year old man of Madurese descent in West Kutai, East Kalimantan on February 1 threatened to undo 20 years of peace between the two ethnicities in Kalimantan. The woman was killed for refusing to have sex with the man who led her to believe that she was going to receive a loan. Though the man has been arrested by local police, a tribal court ruled that the man has to pay a fine and the cost of the funeral proceedings worth more than Rp1.8 billion in total by August of this year. Failure to pay will result in the expulsion of all Madurese descent from West Kutai regency.
In February 2001, a conflict between the two ethnicities in Sampit, Central Kalimantan, ended with more than 500 deaths and around 100,000 people of Madurese descent across the province fleeing their homes for safety, following an altercation which resulted in the death of a Dayak man by a Madurese.
It’s a Trap!
President Jokowi has called for more feedback and criticisms for the government as part of the process to improve public service. “The public must be more active in conveying criticisms, feedback, or potential maladministrations, and public service must maintain efforts to deliver improvements,” the President said in a speech at the launch of the 2020 Ombudsman Annual Report earlier this week.
Given the existence of ambiguously worded ITE law which governs restrictions to free speech online, this call paints quite a poor picture of the President’s understanding of how things work in his country. Meanwhile, Presidential spokesperson Fadjroel Rachman provided a list of ways to properly criticize the government including having to read the 1998 law on freedom of expression. Sure, let’s get a legal expert to weigh in every time we want to tell the government what we think.
Not Exactly Wanda Maximoff
A recently divorced 25 year old woman in Cianjur, West Java made the news late this week after she claimed that she became pregnant only one hour prior to giving birth. She said that she felt something like a wind enter her before her stomach felt funny and one hour later gave birth to a baby girl. She said that she was divorced several months ago and had no signs of pregnancy over the past nine months with her periods arriving as expected each time.
As astonishing as this may sound, this sort of pregnancy is not that uncommon. Cryptic pregnancy, as it is known, causes the mother to not feel any symptoms until late in the pregnancy or even until just before giving birth, and it could vary from person to person. A woman in Tasikmalaya, West Java, had a similar pregnancy in July last year.
Until Next Week
Catch y’all in the next edition. Give us a follow on Twitter or subscribe to this Nuiceletter if you haven’t, share it to your friends if you love what we do, and send us feedback if you have any. Have a safe week, mask up and maintain a distance if you have to meet people.