Officials, reporters take shortcut to get train tickets
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