Crash plane carrying bags of cash
Print Edition
AN airplane with 54 people on board that crashed in the mountains of eastern Indonesia was carrying nearly half a million dollars in government cash for poor families to help offset a spike in fuel prices, an official said yesterday.
Smoldering wreckage of the Trigana Air Service turboprop plane was spotted from the air yesterday morning in a rugged area of the easternmost province of Papua, rescue officials said. There was no immediate word of any survivors from Sunday’s crash, which happened in bad weather.
Four postal workers on the plane were escorting four bags of cash totaling US$468,750 in government fuel aid, Franciscus Haryono, head of the post office in Jayapura, the provincial capital, told reporters.
The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane was flying from Jayapura to the city of Oksibil when it lost contact. Julius Barata, a transport ministry spokesman, said there was no indication the pilot had made a distress call.
The cash from the Social Affairs Ministry was to be distributed among poor people in remote areas to cushion the jump in fuel costs, Haryono said.
“They were carrying those bags to be handed out to poor people in Oksibil through a post office there,” Haryono said.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration raised fuel prices late last year and slashed government subsidies, a move the government says will save billions of dollars but which has already sparked angry protests around the country.
Officials said three search planes spotted the wreckage about 12 kilometers from Oksibil. Search and rescue operations involving about 10 aircraft were halted last night when it got dark and would resume early today, said Heronimus Guru, deputy operations director of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
The plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew members on a scheduled 42-minute flight. Five children, including two infants, were among the passengers.
“Smoke was still billowing from the wreckage when it was spotted by a plane search,” said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency. He said bad weather and rugged terrain were hampering efforts to reach the wreckage.
He said air force and army personnel were to build a helipad near the crash site.
Much of Papua is covered with impenetrable jungles and mountains. Some aircraft that have crashed there in the past have never been found.
Search planes went into the air early yesterday after residents of a village not far from Oksibil told police they saw a plane flying low before crashing into a mountain, said Ludiyanto, who heads the search and rescue operation from Jayapura and, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.
The airline’s crisis center official in Jayapura’s Sentani airport, Budiono, said all the passengers were Indonesians.
They included three local government officials and two members of the local parliament who were to attend a ceremony in Oksibil marking the 70th anniversary of Indonesia’s independence from Dutch colonial rule.
Oksibil, about 280 kilometers south of Jayapura, was experiencing heavy rain, strong winds and fog when the plane lost contact with the airport minutes before it was due to land.
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