LPSK Guarantees To Protect Witnesses And Victims Even In Difficult Access Areas

LPSK logo. (Between)

JAKARTA - The Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) ensures that it continues to provide services for justice seekers in areas that are difficult to access. The service is through the witness and victim protection program.

This was conveyed by the Head of LPSK Hasto Atmojo Suroyo during a virtual discussion "Galang Solidarity-Community-Based Witness-Victim Protection Program", Thursday 9 June.

"This program is to shorten the access of justice seekers, whether they are witnesses or victims to LPSK," he said.

Hasto explained that the witness and victim protection program was formed due to the limited human resources of LPSK. Currently the institution only has about 400 employees.

On the one hand, said Hasto, LPSK must serve justice seekers scattered throughout Indonesia. Often LPSK employees come to locations that are quite difficult to reach physically.

"The limited human resources are also colored by the limited budget provided by the state," he said, as quoted by Antara.

He said that based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) in 2020, the number of criminal acts that occurred in Indonesia reached more than 200 thousand. Meanwhile, each year LPSK can only serve about 4,000 people.

Departing from the background of the problem, LPSK thinks it needs a new breakthrough in reaching or serving justice seekers, one of which is the establishment of a witness and victim protection program.

Hasto hopes that the witness and victim protection program can bridge the communication between victims and witnesses with LPSK from the time the application is submitted until the case is completed.

He explained that assistance for victims and witnesses was not only limited until the case was finished. This is because the protected persons are often traumatized after the case is completed at the court.

"This is where the role of the friend of the witness and the victim is as a companion to the victim or the victim's family," said Hasto.

Lastly, LPSK hopes that friends of witnesses and victims who are partners of the institution can also socialize the role and mandate of LPSK.