The Transportation Ministry has been recording the number of travellers during Eid 2021. Numbers total as many as 1.5 million people, despite the government having issued a homecoming ban between 6-17th May.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi stated that the recorded number of travellers was less than the potential number of travellers before the government issued the ban.
Budi claimed that this year’s Eid homecoming ban has been effective, based on the decreased number of passengers at airports, ferry terminals, and trains.
“What we are doing is quite effective and it is indicated that the air sector, sea sector, and railways fell by 10 percent,” he said.
Previously, the results of a survey compiled by the Transportation Ministry revealed that as many as 18 million travellers planned to return to their hometowns despite the ban.
“We conducted this survey systematically, starting from if there was no prohibition, how many would go home, which resulted in 33 percent. After we declared that it would be prohibited, 11 percent said they would still go home. As the ban was carried out, it fell to 7 percent and that’s quite a lot from 18 million people,” he explained.
The survey stated that the majority of travellers headed to Central Java, which was more than 30 percent of the total respondents. Next, people intended to travel to West Java, which was more than 20 percent. The rest were headed to East Java, Banten and its surroundings, Lampung, and South Sumatra.