Micro-Based Community Activity Restrictions Is Extended, Its Implementation Is Added In 3 Provinces

JAKARTA - The enactment of the Micro-Based Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) has been extended to 22 March.

This is regulated in the Instruction of the Minister of Home Affairs Number 5/2021 concerning Micro-Based PPKM and Optimizing COVID-19 Handling Posts at the Village and Sub-District Levels to Control the Spread of COVID-19.

"The implementation of the Micro-Based PPKM has been extended from March 9, 2021, to March 22, 2021", quoted from the Fifteenth Dictum of the Interior Minister's Instruction, Friday, March 5.

This is the third stage of Micro-Based PPKM. The first stage was carried out on February 9 to 22 and continued from February 23 to March 8.

In the instruction of the Minister of Home Affairs, the number of provinces requested to implement Micro-Based PPKM experienced an increase of three provinces, namely North Sumatra, East Kalimantan, and South Sulawesi. In fact, in the two previous stages of Micro-Based PPKM, the restrictions were only carried out in Java-Bali provinces.

Director-General of Regional Administration Development at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Syafrizal, said the addition of the three provinces was due to the increasing number of cases in the region.

"We add North Sumatra, South Sulawesi and East Kalimantan. The cases (there, red) continue to increase", he said when contacted by reporters.

As previously reported, the COVID-19 Handling Task Force stated that the implementation of Micro-Based PPKM at the neighborhood level since last January was considered effective in preventing the transmission of COVID-19 in the community.

President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) also conveyed a similar sentiment last February. He said Micro-Based PPKM had hit COVID-19 cases.

"Indeed, at the beginning I was angry. This PPKM was ineffective because only two provinces had implemented it. The others did not go down at all. Why did I say that at the beginning of the week the PPKM was ineffective? Because none of the curves have dropped", Jokowi said in the Presidential Secretariat YouTube channel.

Why is Jokowi so optimistic that the micro-based PPKM will be able to hit the case? He learned from handling COVID-19 in India. At the beginning of the pandemic, India implemented a one-country lockdown. Unfortunately, this failed due to weaker economic conditions.

Until finally, India changed its strategy for handling the pandemic by implementing lockdowns at the micro-level. "Even though in the beginning India had a total lockdown, so India changed its strategy, but the strategy is the same, micro-based PPKM. So, that's what we are implementing", said Jokowi.

From there, Jokowi considered the previous limitation strategies, namely PPKM and PSBB, to be wrong.

"We can't lock down the whole city if there was only one red zone neighborhood, if we do that, the economy will be affected. If one sub-district is affected, then just isolate one district. That's what India has done", he concluded.