Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama 'Ahok' admitted to participate in Trade Minister's regulation related to alcoholic selling ban in minimart. The regulation is officially applied today, Thursday (4/16).

Just follow the rules

“Just follow the rules,” he said at City hall, Thursday (4/16).

Ahok added that the regulation is not bothering him much even though the city revenue will decline. "The illegal alcoholic selling will be new problem. So how to handle this?," he added.

The governor is questioning the law enforcement for this matter since the law enforcement in Indonesia still low. As the example, many motorcyclists who did not wearing helmet were escape from the law.

Separately, the Executive Director of the Citizen Care of City Development, Arman Zakaria admitted there are several things that need to be considered related to the ban.

The first is, monitoring and controlling are needed to be done by related unit particularly Jakarta Cooperatives, Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises and Trade (KUKMP) Department. “Second is law enforcement as well as the apparatus consistency,” he told.

Zakaria added in order to run the regulation effectively is to socialize regarding to the alcoholic purpose in citizen’s mindset as well as its impact. For instance, the European culture who can’t stand any longer without alcohol.

“This matter is supposed to be reviewed from several perceptions, instead of religion or culture perception only. The most important, if there is any violation the sanctions should be given to both consumer and apparatus,” he expressed.

For your information, the Trade Minister Regulation No. 06/M-DAG/PER/1/2015 about the Control and Supervision of Procurement, Distribution, and Sale of Alcoholic Beverages is effectively applied today. The whole of minimarket and retailers in Indonesia are restricted to sell alcoholic beverages type A which have alcohol content below 5 percent.