Is This Jakarta's Most-Dangerous Commute?

The Zevolution 9 Princes Debble ferry was docked at Pulau Ayer, in Jakarta's Thousand Islands chain, last week when it burst into flames, forcing 19 passengers and three crewmen to evacuate as the fire quickly spread.

It was the second major accident involving a Thousand Islands ferry that month, and the third of the year after a deadly fire left more than 20 people dead and set off calls for stricter regulation of the island chain's privately operated ferry networks. That accident left Thousand Islands residents shaken but stuck with a tough reality: the ferries may be dangerous, but they are the only way to reach the mainland.

"The ships that were in accidents were all privately owned," said Mahdi, an official at North Jakarta's Muara Angke Port. "They weren't listed with our office. After the accidents, the ships' operators were nowhere to be found."

The police arrested four crewmen with the KM Zahro Express after January's fatal accident, but the ship's captain, a man charged with negligence after an investigation found that the ferry was more than 100 passengers over its passenger manifest, had already vanished.

So what do the residents of the island chain, one of the most-neglected regions of the Indonesian capital, think of their commute? I went to the ferry terminal in North Jakarta to find out.

I arrived at the Muara Angke Port on a Friday morning to discover that no ferries were leaving until the next day. But boats would be arriving from the island chain throughout the day as residents, and tourists, returned to mainland Jakarta.

Rizky, a 22-year-old tourist, said the recent spate of boat accidents left him uneasy about boarding a boat to Thousand Islands. But he trusted that the city government had addressed some of the issues in the wake of January's fatal fire.

"I was worried about big waves, but I trust the Jakarta Transportation Agency," he said. "The officers made sure we wore a life vest."

The Jakarta Police have tried to play down concerns over the ferries' abysmal safety records. One police official argued that the recent accident off Pulau Ayer was proof that the ferries were following stricter safety regulations than before.

"In terms of safety, everyone was still alive [after the boat caught fire]," Comr. Pandji Santoso told local media. "It meant that… all is well. There were life jackets, so in terms of safety, because everyone survived, it means that safety is good."

But Mahdi dismissed claims that police response to ferry accidents had improved.

"During the accident, the police only came to guard the people who were watching," he told me.

The Thousand Islands is home to more than 100 islands, many of which remain uninhabited. Some are tourist locations, known locally as an affordable island getaway for the city's residents. But many others are fishing villages, home to long-established communities who feel at home on the open ocean.

Sainan, a fishermen from Pulau Kelapa, told me he never felt nervous when boarding one of the region's ferries. Why be nervous when the next island is always within view, he asked.

"The distance between islands is not that far," he said.

But aren't you ever afraid? There have been so many accidents recently, I asked.

"I'm not afraid," Sainan told me. "As a person who lives in the islands, my spirit belongs to the seas."