Tenggarong, East Kalimantan.
March 23, 2012
The Kutai Kartanegara District Court on Wednesday began proceedings related to the collapse of the Mahakam II Bridge, which killed and injured dozens of people in November last year.
Public prosecutor Zulkifli Sultan read out charges against three defendants, two of whom were employees of the Kutai Kartanegara Public Works Agency, demanding five-year sentences for each of the defendants for criminal negligence in the tragedy.
The two public employees, whose trial proceeded separately from the third defendant, filed an objection on Wednesday to the legal basis of the charges against them, and their trial will pick up addressing that motion on Tuesday next week.
The third defendant’s trial will resume a day later, with an agenda to begin hearing witnesses’ testimonies.
The civil servants charged are Yoyo Suriana, the infrastructure chief of Kutai Kartanegara district in East Kalimantan, and Setiono, a technical executor of the project. The third defendant, Muhammad Syahrial Fahrurrozi, was a project manager with construction company Bukaka Teknik Utama, in charge of the bridge’s maintenance and repairs.
Ni Putu Sri Indayani will serve as the trial’s presiding judge.
“There will be two trials next week. First to hear the objection of the two Public Works Agency employees and the next day to hear witnesses’ testimonies. According to Kutai Kartanegara District Court documents, 60 witnesses will testify in the trials,” Zulkifli told the Jakarta Globe, adding that the panel of judges wanted more testimonies from technical witnesses.
The three defendants have been detained by Kutai Kartanegara Police since early January.
The 720-meter-long bridge over the Mahakam River — built to resemble San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge — buckled on Nov. 26, killing 24 people and injuring more than 30 others. About a dozen remain missing. The bridge collapse also caused billions of rupiah in losses for mining companies that use the Mahakam River for the transport of coal.
Bukaka was performing maintenance on the 10-year-old bridge at the time of the collapse.
Police have questioned more than 50 witnesses in the case. Among them are engineering experts from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), the Indonesian Society of Engineers (PII) and the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT).
Priyo Suprobo, a structural engineer at the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS) in Surabaya, previously posited that the collapse was triggered when one of the linchpins along the deck sheared because of uneven loading as a result of a sag in the deck, caused in turn by the shifting anchor blocks.
When the linchpin sheared, he said, it “caused shock loading that resulted in the other linchpins also shearing.”
Priyo said the theory was based on the discovery of a sheared linchpin thrown some 50 meters from the bridge.
(also x the JG)
wo 21 maa 2012 - 19:51