Safety Last

One of the main concerns I have about living in Palembang is the general attitude towards safety and hygiene. I'm sure there must be some sort of safety regulations around but nobody seems to abide by them. There is just very little awareness by the people of what can happen.

These are some examples of what I've observed:

- Many motorcyclists ride around with no helmets on. OR, they have it on but its not buckled up. Here we have a father (helmet without any straps) and his daughter with no helmet on one of the main roads with heavy traffic.



- People only put on their seat belts in the car when they know there are policemen up ahead. (Actually, its the same way in Malaysia.)

- The little take away shop down the road from us had one of its workers accidentally mince up three of his fingers because he was joking around with a friend while working.

- At Richard's workplace, there have been careless accidents where people have been hurt by sacks of fertilizer that have fallen down from being stacked too high.

Here are a few photos with an overloaded theme to them:







I do realize that the three 'overcrowded' scenarios may be such because of an employer's attitude towards safety and the employees may not have much say in it. The thing is, I really wonder if the employees themselves feel that their safety is compromised.

So, what do I do about all this? Nothing much. I try to tell those around me whenever I see something but they always have a reason for doing things the way they do. We had a funny situation in the car last week with Aaron insisting to the babysitter that she had to put on her seatbelt while the girl kept insisting back that its fine and the police won't catch her. She didn't put it on until I told her she HAD to.