Officials, reporters take shortcut to get train tickets
Evi Mariani and Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
As most of the executive train tickets sold out three weeks prior to the Idul Fitri holiday, many of those who had planned to return to their hometowns to celebrate tried to take a short cut in their bid to get tickets home.
Idul Fitri, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadhan, is expected to fall on Nov. 25.
"My desk is full of letters from people asking me to prioritize them in obtaining tickets home," Zainal Abidin, spokesman of state-owned railway operator PT KAI, said on Saturday.
"Because of my position as a public relations officer, most of the letters are sent by chief editors and journalists. However, I have to decline their requests because almost all the tickets have been snapped up."
Zainal said that the head of PT KAI's operational area I, Masduki Achmad, had admitted that many such letters had come from high-ranking military and police officers, as well as state officials.
"I admit that sometimes PT KAI could not decline a number of such requests... But please, respect customers who had to queue for hours just to obtain a single ticket," he told The Jakarta Post.
Unlike in previous years, PT KAI opened the sales for executive trains on Nov. 1 at six train stations in Jakarta, Bekasi and Bogor, besides the Juanda ticket reservation center. Most of the seats available between departure dates Nov. 18 and Nov. 26 have already been snapped up.
Recently, Zainal announced that PT KAI will provide additional services to depart Jakarta from Nov. 18 to Dec. 2. The ticket sales will open on Tuesday.
He added that PT KAI usually allocates a number of tickets for "emergency" situations.
"Emergency is for example, if there are two tickets with the same seat number. But such incidents rarely happen actually," he said, declining to reveal the number of such tickets for fear PT KAI will be inundated by people declaring themselves "emergency passengers".
Zainal said that not all the tickets for the available seats would be sold at the seven stations.
"We allocate about 10 tickets for each executive train and about 20 business-class tickets to our partner Expert. Customers can call Expert on 021-42211222 and pay through the auto-teller machine of Bank Central Asia (BCA)."
Additional trains departing Jakarta daily, Nov. 18 - Dec. 2
.rm80
Train From To Time Class Ticket
price
Argo Lawu Jakarta Surakarta 9:30 a.m. Executive Rp 185,000
Gajayana Jakarta Malang 5:30 a.m. Executive Rp 185,000
Kamandanu Jakarta Semarang 11:25 a.m Executive Rp 150,000
Gumarang Jakarta Surabaya 3:30 p.m. Executive Rp 165,000
Cirebon Exp. Jakarta Cirebon 4:15 a.m. Executive Rp 50,000
Senja Utama Jakarta Yogyakarta 8:20 p.m. Executive Rp 100,000
Business Rp 70,000
Senja Utama Jakarta Semarang 6:20 p.m. Executive Rp 100,000
Business Rp 60,000