Very disappointing! Look at this commentary a local newspaper in Indonesia just printed.
“I urge the people not to misuse the fire-dispatcher phone number for pranks. It is very time consuming. Once arrived at the fire location, the fire had already gone wild and big, and would took longer time to handle it,” Vice Mayor of the City of Bandung, Ayi Vivananda.
Too many government officials can only “URGE” the people to do something. You can find the official news HERE (in Bahasa Indonesia). The printed version of the paper got more details on why those prank phone calls can disturb the performance of the fire-fighter in reaching the “real” or “correct” fire location. These pranks elevate the response time of the fire fighter and minimize the chance of the officials in saving other people’s lives.
Normally as government officials “with the power” to do some real good, they don’t need to URGE people to stop these prank calls, especially when it comes down in saving other people’s lives. They should’ve made the right and much-needed REGULATIONS and even clear-cut LAW to govern this and punish all those irresponsible people, risking and endangering other people’s lives.
They should’ve seen our neighbouring countries, when it comes to saving lives and all, give a STERN WARNING in advanced, even punishable by LAW.
“DO NOT PRESS THE BUTTON, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF AN EMERGENCY. MISUSE: FINE $5000.” Very effective, no?
So, please, the government don’t just sit there and “sip” on the people’s money and keep on going mending and stretching regulations for solely for increasing more income to the treasury (of which aren’t clear to where those funds are spent), e.g.: all tax, but no real public service improvement. This is more important as lives are at stakes, dear Sir and Ma’am!
Related to my teammate’s article HERE (in Bahasa Indonesia).
The government has the “power”, the right, and even the OBLIGATION to build the infrastructure to support and help these “life-saving” efforts (in this case, fire disaster).
Should they wait for foreign aids? Oh, come on, IMHO they shouldn’t, they should’ve been self-sufficient. Especially when it comes to their own people’s lives and well-being. They should’ve given more priority on these areas.
