Learning From The Sidoarjo Tragedy, Tito Karnavian: This Is A Wake Up Call To Improve Islamic Boarding School Infrastructure

JAKARTA - Minister of Home Affairs Tito Karnavian said the collapse of the prayer room building at the Al Khoziny Islamic Boarding School, Sidoarjo, was a wake-up call for the government to strengthen the guarantee of the safety of Islamic boarding school education infrastructure throughout Indonesia.

This was conveyed by Tito during the signing of a joint agreement between the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR), and the Ministry of Religion in Jakarta, Tuesday, October 14.

"I think the incident some time ago in Sidoarjo has become a kind of wake-up call for us to ensure that the pesantren education infrastructure in the future is better," said Tito.

According to Tito, pesantren is one of the main pillars of national education that has played a major role in educating the nation's life since the independence struggle period. Therefore, he said, government support for pesantren is not only in terms of learning, but also infrastructure that is safe and decent.

"Essensing education is a very important education because it is one of the supervisors to educate the nation's children," he said.

Tito explained that the government already has a number of regulations governing the construction and renovation of buildings, including in Islamic boarding schools. Among them are Law Number 28 of 2022 concerning Building Buildings, Law Number 6 of 2023 concerning Job Creation, as well as several government regulations regarding risk-based licensing.

"For the construction of buildings, both new, renovation, and change, everything has been arranged. In the past, the name was IMB, now it is called building approval (PBG)," said Tito.

He also highlighted the importance of increasing the role of local governments in supervising the development of pesantren. According to him, the refusal attitude of local officials to enter the pesantren environment has the potential to ignore the safety of students.

"Maybe local governments are a bit reluctant to enter madrasas or Islamic boarding schools to remind them. Even though their role is important, not only reminds them, but also oversees whether the building already has PBG or not," explained Tito.

He emphasized that the supervision was not to hinder pesantren activities, but to ensure that all buildings were suitable for use and safe for students.

This monitoring mechanism needs to be improved in the future. Not to hinder the education process, let alone pesantren, but to ensure that pesantren education infrastructure is truly feasible and safe," said Tito.

As a concrete step, the government is now revamping the governance of pesantren education infrastructure through the signing of a joint agreement between the Ministry of Religion, the Ministry of PUPR, and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Dalam kesepakatan itu, Kementerian PUPR bertanggung jawab memastikan keamanan bangunan, Kementerian Agama berperan sebagai fasilitator pesantren pembinaan pesantren, sementara Kemendagri memastikan pemerintah daerah melakukan audit terhadap kondisi bangunan pesantren.