Luhut Orders Odd-Even Tourism Areas, Yogyakarta City Government Still Studying

Malioboro Yogyakarta/ANTARA

YOGYAKARTA - Yogyakarta City Government is still considering various aspects related to the implementation of odd-even policies in tourist areas on weekends. The reason is that the area of Yogyakarta City is not so wide and there are many entrances to the city.

"There are 16 entrances to the city of Yogyakarta. This is one of our considerations before deciding to implement the odd-even policy," said Yogyakarta Deputy Mayor Heroe Poerwadi, quoted by Antara, Thursday, September 16.

In addition, he continued, almost all tourist areas in the city of Yogyakarta intersect with residential areas, so the odd-even policy has the potential to make it difficult for local residents to carry out their activities.

"If the tourist area is in a centralized location with only one access road, for example, on a beach or mountain, the odd-even policy will be easy to implement," he said.

However, continued Heroe, this condition was not found in Yogyakarta City, so implementing an odd-even policy would be very difficult.

"The condition of the city of Yogyakarta is very 'open'. There are many access roads. So it will be difficult to separate whether road users are local residents or tourists," he said.

Even so, Heroe said the regulation, which was an instruction from the central government, would still be further coordinated with the Department of Transportation and the Yogyakarta Police.

Therefore, Heroe hopes that tourists who will enter the city of Yogyakarta have already passed the screening conducted by the district government around the city of Yogyakarta.

"For this weekend, we will still carry out random checks on tourists from outside the region who come. Whether they have been vaccinated or not and whether they can show a negative letter for COVID-19," he said.

At the end of last week, there were more than 170 tourist buses from outside the area that were not allowed to enter the city of Yogyakarta. However, the tourism bus stopped at a number of roads in the border area of Yogyakarta City.

"Tourists enter the city of Yogyakarta using 'online' taxis. Hopefully, tourists from outside the region will still comply with health protocols, have been vaccinated and confirmed negative for COVID-19," he said.