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ven though many residents of Greater Jakarta complain about how difficult it is to find time to interact with their neighbors due to busy schedules, when it comes to leaving their homes for the Idul Fitri holiday, they can rely on these next-door acquaintances to keep a close eye on their houses while they are away.

Budi Waluyo, 50, always leaves a spare key for one of his neighbors in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, before going on long trips, such as this year’s mudik (exodus).

“I do that every year,” Budi told The Jakarta Post on Monday while waiting for a train to take him and his daughter to Malang, East Java, where his parents live.

Muhammad Liga Afifi, 43, who departed to Yogyakarta from Gambir Station in Central Jakarta with his wife and two kids, said that as he lived in a rented house in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, he would entrust the security of it to his landlord.

“I’ll just lock the door and leave the keys with my landlord,” he said.

Another resident, Doni Sugandi, 32, said he was confident that his house in South Tangerang, Banten, would be safe while his entire family spends the holiday in his hometown in Bandung, West Java, because the residential complex he lived in was guarded by security guards.

“Just like always, I need only lock the door. It’s quite a safe neighborhood with guards standing by,” he said.

During the Idul Fitri festivities, when families return to their hometowns for up to weeks at a time, houses that are left empty are often robbed.

The Jakarta Police recorded 386 criminal cases during the Ramadhan and Idul Fitri holiday season in 2016, most of which were cases of breaking and entering or motorcycle theft.

However, to prevent the number of crimes from increasing, the police have announced a plan to conduct joint patrols with the Indonesian Military (TNI) to check on empty houses in the city from June 11 to 20.

“These empty houses become the targets of crimes after their owners leave for mudik,” Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Raden Prabowo Argo Yuwono said as quoted by tempo.co.

Argo urged holidaymakers to properly secure their houses before leaving on mudik, adding that the police suggested that homeowners install security cameras for real-time surveillance.

Holidaymakers are also expected to coordinate with local security officers and their neighborhood unit heads or trusted neighbors to keep an eye on their empty houses during the holiday.

Separately, the Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) would also patrol all residential areas to help secure the empty houses throughout the holiday, according to agency head Yani Wahyu.

“We will cooperate with neighborhood units (RT), community units (RW), community development units (Binsa), village supervisory non-commissioned officers (Babinsa), subdistrict officials and Satpol PP to help patrol the houses,” Yani said on Sunday, tribunnews.com reported.

A Bekasi resident, Aris Munandar, 38, said he was confident that his house in Cikarang, Bekasi, West Java, would be safe because he and his neighbors had agreed to pay Rp 100,000 (US$7) in security fees.

“The residents and security guards worked together in three shifts [to guard the neighborhood], in the morning, at noon and at night,” he said.

He added that the neighborhood that he lived in employed a strict open-close system to monitor every visitor in the area, so he was confident that his house would be safe, provided that he lock the doors.(ami)