The tighter restrictions, which aim to reduce the daily COVID-19 tally to below 10,000 cases, are in place through to July 20 and apply to a total of 127 cities and regencies on the two islands.

President Joko Widodo said during last week’s announcement that the PPKM Darurat would be “more restrictive” compared to previous policies.

On Tuesday, however, the city’s roads were jammed with both essential and nonessential workers still heading to their workplaces, according to the Jakarta Police. The continuing activity had created heavy traffic at many police checkpoints, where officers check the required documents of each individual before allowing them to pass.

Long queues of passengers also formed at Commuter Line train stations, even after the rail service reduced passenger capacity to 32 percent per car and operating hours to 17 hours, from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day.

Read also: COVID-19 checkpoints create Jakarta gridlock

The high level of community mobility had persisted, the Jakarta Police said, because businesses in nonessential and “noncritical” sectors were still allowing their employees to work from the office, in direct contradiction to the government’s instruction to work from home (WFH) under the PPKM Darurat.

"Immediately report to the [local COVID-19] task force if it is found that nonessential [workers] are being forced to [go in to] work, even though this is no longer allowed," Jakarta Police spokesperson Yusri Yunus said on Monday, as quoted by Kompas.com.

The business sectors categorized as essential or critical are regulated in a home minister’s instruction on the PPKM Darurat, which also requires these businesses to operate at a reduced workplace capacity of just 50 percent.

Essential businesses include the Indonesian bourse, banks and hotels, while critical business sectors include energy, logistics and food.

WFH is mandatory for all employees of nonessential or noncritical businesses.

During his inspection on Tuesday, Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan found dozens of employees were still working at two offices in Sahid Sudirman Center in Central Jakarta. The findings were documented and posted on his Instagram account. A photo showed that an office was immediately sealed off.

 

 

 

 

 

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“The owners of these companies are irresponsible people,” said Anies in a separate video. “The owners were at home but the employees were told to go into work, taking the risk [of being infected].”

On Wednesday, police named three suspects from two companies after an investigation, local media reported. All were charged under the 1984 law.

The country reported another daily record of 34,379 new cases and 1,040 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday. It has recorded more than 20,000 daily cases for almost the past two weeks, surpassing the all-time high it recorded during the peak of the “first wave” of infections in January.

Read also: Darkest days ahead: Deaths surge in Indonesia as health facilities collapse

Indonesia is anticipating its caseload to keep rising for another two weeks before numbers start falling as a result of the PPKM Darurat, according to Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who is overseeing the government’s latest COVID-19 policy.

“We urge the public to comply with the rules that apply during the PPKM Darurat,” national COVID-19 task force spokesperson Wiku Adisasmito told a virtual conference on Tuesday. He also urged all nonessential private businesses not to force employees to come to the office.

Local media coverage also showed food stalls and restaurants in some parts of Java still offering dine-in services, while street vendors at traditional markets continued to operate in violation of PPKM Darurat measures.

Social sanctions to imprisonment

Several local administrations tasked with implementing the PPKM Darurat are relying on “Operation Yustiri”, which authorizes public order agencies (Satpol PP) to enforce public compliance, including imposing social and administrative sanctions against violators.

Meanwhile, a joint force of more than 50,000 members of the National Police and Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel have been deployed at more than 400 checkpoints across Java and Bali to help enforce the emergency restrictions.

Read also: Vaccination card, fewer passengers: What you need to know about latest COVID-19 mobility curbs

Facilities for basic legal proceedings, staffed with judicial officers from the Attorney General’s Office, have been set up in open fields or as mobile units to sanction PPKM Darurat violators with a fine or community service order.

Also on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General for General Crimes Fadil Zumhana distributed a letter to the heads of local prosecutor’s offices on the procedural hierarchy that applied to violations committed during the PPKM Darurat period.

“Law enforcement [...] can be carried out through investigations of minor offenses for regional regulation violations, and criminal investigations for violations of the 1984 law on outbreaks of communicable disease or the Criminal Code,” Fadil said in the letter, a copy of which The Jakarta Post obtained on Wednesday.

Under the 1984 law, anyone who obstructs disease control and management measures can face a prison sentence of up to one year and a maximum fine of Rp 1 million (US$69).

Succession of confusing policies

Epidemiologists deem the new emergency restrictions to be more lenient than last year’s large-scale social restrictions, or PSBB, which banned all domestic travel to and from selected provinces.

The PPKM Darurat still permits long-distance travel in the country as long as travelers can present proof that they have had at least one vaccine shot, in addition to a negative result from a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for air travel or a negative antigen test result for traveling by land or sea.

Read also: Fears linger emergency COVID-19 curbs may fall short

Experts also said the new restrictions has caused confusion amid the government's multitude of existing COVID-19 policies.

“People have grown weary over the many [public health] policies the government has issued. Public confusion is inevitable,” said public policy expert Agus Pambagio, adding that people’s current state of mind had made them apathetic toward the PPKM Darurat.

Agus said many people were insistent on traveling or going to the office because of the lack of social and economic support from the government.

“There are people who are going in to work in the morning [so they can] put food on the table in the evening,” he said.