The Jakarta administration has ensured that public health and transportation services will be available on Wednesday, which has been designated a public holiday for the capital as eligible citizens cast their votes in the gubernatorial election.

City Health Agency chief Dien Emmawati said on Tuesday that public health services would open full-time on polling day.

All 296 subdistrict public health centers, 44 district health centers and six city-owned hospitals will remain open. “District health centers and hospitals will still open 24-hours. Jakarta citizens need not worry, our officials will be ready to serve them,” Dien said.

Separately, City Transportation Agency chief Udar Pristono also said that Transjakarta Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) would run a normal schedule on Wednesday.

Udar said that Transjakarta would operate from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. as usual. “The public will still be served by Transjakarta. The BRT buses will be available like normal,” Udar said.

Both Dien and Udar said that the agencies would make sure that employees with voting rights would be given the opportunity to cast their votes through scheduling arrangements.

A gubernatorial regulation issued earlier this year mandates that July 11 be a public holiday, in an effort to encourage eligible Jakarta citizens to vote across the capital.

The regulation also mandates that direct services, either public or private, like health and transportation should remain open, but give their employees time to cast their votes.

Other state and private institutions like administration offices, education facilities, banking and trade were requested to give their Jakarta employees a day off.

Bank Indonesia (BI), however, has announced that the central bank and banking services in the capital would continue as normal.

“By operating normally, BI expects to be able to cater to all banking needs in and outside Jakarta and facilitate normal economic activity,” BI Governor Darmin Nasution said in a statement.

Darmin added that BI’s central office in Jakarta was a national hub for the operation of the central bank’s cash services, national clearing system (SKNBI) and real-time gross settlement (BI-RTGS), and thus should remain open.

The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) will also carry out normal trading on Wednesday, property developer PT Gading Development is scheduled to list its shares on the bourse after an initial public offering (IPO) last week.

More than 6.9 million Jakartans are registered to vote at more than 15,000 polling stations across the capital for the capital’s second direct gubernatorial election.

Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said on Tuesday that the police would deploy 12,459 officers to watch over the election process with 6,401 officers guarding polling stations and the others on standby.

 “We won’t be on our own looking after the polling stations. Safeguarding elections is also the task of the Regional Election Organizer Committee (KPPS),” Rikwanto said.

He said that four members of KPPS would be on duty at the entrance of each polling station, one would be placed at the exit and two others would monitor inside the polling stations.

The police have classified 14,815 of the 15,111 polling stations as “safe locations”, 257 polling stations as “risk-prone” and another 39 as “high-risk”.

For the high-risk stations, the police will deploy two officers to safeguard the location while the risk-prone stations will be watched over by one officer each.

In the safe locations, one officer would be deployed to look after four stations. (aml)

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