Amy Chew – New coronavirus cases are rising in Indonesia's provinces despite the government's efforts to contain the outbreak in Jakarta, as hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the capital seek ways to bypass a travel ban to return to their hometowns to observe the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
Scientists are worried the mass wave of travellers could lead to the virus spreading from Jakarta and its satellite cities of 30 million, the epicentre of the pandemic, to the provinces where hospital facilities are not as equipped to handle an outbreak as those in the capital.
Ganjar Pranowo, the governor of Central Java, said more than "600,000 people" had arrived in the province of 35 million people since March.
"We are monitoring the mudik cases. We detected positive infections in Cilacap regency and travellers from East Java who could potentially spread the virus. We have quarantined them," Ganjar said.
Mudik refers to the annual exodus for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, which normally sees hordes of people travelling to their hometowns and ancestral villages. About 19.5 million people went on mudik last year, according to the government.
The coronavirus pandemic has also left an estimated 2.8 million Indonesians jobless, with many returning home as a result.
Indonesian on Thursday recorded 338 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections nationwide to 12,776. Another 35 died of the virus, bringing the death toll to 930, the second highest rate in Asia outside China.
On April 21, President Joko Widodo, who has been criticised for being slow in handling the pandemic, banned all travel until June 1 to stem the spread of the coronavirus from Jakarta to the provinces.
However, migrant workers from Jakarta and its satellite cities, desperate to return to their hometowns, are using creative ways to dodge the travel ban.
Over the weekend, West Java police stopped a cargo truck in Banten province to find a car hidden at the back with a couple inside, heading for a ferry terminal to cross over to Sumatra Island from Java Island, local media reported.
On Thursday, Jakarta police said they had detained at least four trucks travelling out Jakarta with a total of 20 passengers hiding inside its cargo hold covered with tarpaulin.
Sambodo Purnomo Yogo, the Jakarta Metropolitan Police's director of traffic, expected the trucks would try to continue to operate. The police would carry out stringent checks to keep them in check, he said.
Some of the truck operators who smuggled people had advertised their services online or by word of mouth, said epidemiologist Pandu Riono from University of Indonesia.
According to data from the National Traffic Police on Wednesday, a total of 30,193 vehicles, including private cars, buses and motorcycles, were forced to turn back during the first 12 days of the Eid al-Fitr security operation.
"I am very worried. The cases of Covid-19 have increased in all the provinces on Java Island. This is due to a combination of increased testing and mudik," said Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia.
The University of Indonesia on April 12 estimated that the spike in the number of travellers would lead to an additional 1 million people needing hospital treatment on Java Island, outside Greater Jakarta, by July 1.
"The desire to travel home is emotional, wanting to spend time with family during this big celebration is not just an economic factor," Pandu said.
"There is internal mudik going on as well," he added. "In Central Java's city of Semarang, for example, migrant workers in Semarang will return to their small towns and villages. It is not just a question of travel from Jakarta back to the provinces."
Pandu said the festive-linked travel was similar to what the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first coronavirus outbreak emerged, had experienced. "Millions of people travelled within and outside the country during a festive season," he said.
East Java is the province which has seen the sharpest rise in coronavirus cases, according to Pandu, due to clusters from a cigarette factory and a pesantren, or religious boarding school.
The Al Fatah pesantren in Temboro village, Magetan regency, had 24 students who tested positive for the coronavirus. It houses more than 22,000 students, 2,000 of whom are foreigners, mostly from Southeast Asian countries. The school is also a base for Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic missionary movement.
Last month, two workers from tobacco giant HM Sampoerna's factory in Rungkut Surabaya, East Java, died of the Covid-19 disease while another 63 tested positive. The deaths led to the temporary closure of the factory and the quarantine of more than 500 workers.
As of Wednesday, East Java had the third-highest number of coronavirus cases. Pandu warned that cigarette factories in East and Central Java were "potentially" a source of new clusters as cigarette factories typically had a huge workforce.
"Those factories are still operating. And given the large number of workers in the factories, there is no social distancing," said Pandu, adding that none of the workers wore protective masks either. "These factories should follow the [Covid-19] protocol. Their workers should be tested."
A 2017 study by the World Bank showed that 94 per cent of workers in Indonesia's tobacco industry lived in Central Java, East Java and West Nusa Tenggara. Employment by the tobacco industry in some districts in these provinces accounts for almost one-third of the total workforce.
The tobacco industry employed some 5.98 million workers in 2019, according to Indonesia's Industry Ministry.