Fake ship tickets found at Tanjung Priok port

Fake ship tickets found at Tanjung Priok port

JAKARTA (JP): The annual exodus of people heading home for the
upcoming Idul Fitri and Christmas holidays was marred by the
discovery of counterfeit ship tickets at Tanjung Priok seaport in
North Jakarta on Wednesday.

Some 160 passengers of the Leuser, which was scheduled to set
sail for Belinyu, on Bangka island, South Sumatra, had to
disembark because they were holding fake tickets.

Tanjung Priok Seaport Police chief of detectives Sr. Insp.
Hasyim said the fake tickets were first noticed by an official of
state-owned shipping company PT Pelni, who saw that a
ticketholder was about to board the ship.

"The ticket was similar to real ones but the official could
see the difference right away," Hasyim told The Jakarta Post by
phone.

After the first find, several officials conducted a check for
more counterfeit tickets from passengers who had boarded the
ship.

The officials later found that some 160 passengers were
holding fake tickets and they immediately told them to disembark.

"The holders of fake tickets turned out to be high school and
university students from Bandung, West Java, who were heading
home to Bangka island," Hasyim said, adding that the students did
not know that their tickets were not real.

Passenger Doni S. Firman, who coordinated the purchase of the
tickets, told officials that he had bought the tickets from a man
named Joko Sutarno, who lived in Bandung.

Doni said he did not become suspicious when the scalper, whom
he did not know for a long time, offered to find tickets for him.

Hasyim said police had yet to locate the scalper.

Hasyim added that after the students were questioned, they
were transported to Bangka island on board the Tangiang.

"We don't want to keep them too long. We understand how they
must feel," Hasyim said.

Several fake tickets were also reportedly found at Gambir
railway station in Central Jakarta after conductors discovered
that several passengers had the same seat numbers.

However, a public relations official at state-owned railway
company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (PT KAI), Gatot Wibowo, denied
that fake tickets were found at the station.

"It was only a technical problem that several passengers had
purchased tickets with the same seat numbers," Gatot told the
Post by phone.

Separately, some 12,000 traditional medicine vendors and their
families left the capital on Wednesday on board 160 buses
provided by PT Sido Muncul, a producer of jamu (traditional
medicine). They headed for their homes in Kuningan, West Java;
Cirebon, Tegal, Surakarta, Wonogiri and Banjarnegara in Central
Java; and Kediri and Malang in East Java.

Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications Agum
Gumelar, who attended the send-off, told the jamu vendors not to
bring friends and relatives with them when they return to the
capital.

People from outside Jakarta have been known to tell stories of
success about life in the capital and their friends and relatives
accompany them when they return to the capital after the holiday.

Similarly at the National Monument (Monas), Central Jakarta,
some 3,000 street vendors from several areas in Greater Jakarta
left the capital for their homes using 52 buses provided by
cigarette company PT Bentoel.

In Bogor, several passengers complained that several bus
operators had arbitrarily raised the fares.

While the government only allows bus operators to raise the
fares by 25 percent during the holidays, several operators raise
them by up to 50 percent.

A similar practice was found in Makassar, South Sulawesi,
where the local administration instructed bus operators not to
raise fares during the holiday season.

In contrast to the annual exodus in the capital, the number of
people flocking to other places across the country did not show a
large increase on Wednesday.

In Semarang, Central Java, the number of people arriving at
Tawang and Poncol railway stations had not shown a significant
increase.

"There is only a slight increase in the number of people
arriving today at the stations," a public relations official at
PT KAI in Semarang, Suprapto, said.

It was the same situation in Pekanbaru, Riau, and in Jambi.

In Padang, West Sumatra, some 2,000 police officers were on
hand to anticipate an increase in crime ahead of next week's
holiday. (jaw/28/41)