Battered Transportation Hit By The COVID-19 Pandemic, KAI Boss Confesses The Number Of Passengers Has Dropped Drastically

JAKARTA - Mass transportation is one of the economic sectors hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because various restrictive policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have caused the number of passengers to drop drastically.

President Director of PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero) Didiek Hartantyo explained that his party also felt the impact of the outbreak. Didiek said that under normal conditions, when there was no pandemic, trains could involve up to 1.2 million passengers.

Meanwhile, in the early days of the corona virus outbreak, Didiek said, the maximum number of passengers only carried 20,000 people per day.

"The impact of the pandemic is extraordinary and in May 2020 with the implementation of large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) the number of passengers transported by trains in a day is only 20,000. So you can imagine a decrease from 1.270 million to only 20,000," he said in a virtual discussion, Wednesday. , August 18th.

Didiek said that the effort to survive the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was to apply strict health protocols to increase the number of passengers again.

According to him, conditions are increasingly benefiting from public awareness of implementing health protocols so that they are strict while traveling so that the number continues to increase.

Didiek hopes that in the future the handling of the pandemic will improve, followed by an increase in the number of passengers.

"Then in the last three months the average was around 419,000 and today in the Implementation of Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) we together with the direction of the Minister of Transportation carry out good health protocols," he said.

Not only that, Didiek explained that due to the pandemic, train mileage has also decreased. In 2019, the total distance covered by all trains reached 74.5 million kilometers (km). Meanwhile, in 2020 or the beginning of the outbreak in the country, the total distance traveled is only about 52 million km.

"So in 2020 it is equivalent to 1,301 times the circumference of the earth, while in 2019 it is equivalent to 1,859 times the circumference of the earth," he said.