It’s official – we are getting six days off (excluding two weekends) for this year’s Eid al-Fitr holiday in Indonesia.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reforms (Kemenpan) announced that they were “in the process” of making June 23, which is the Friday before Eid (which is predicted to fall on June 25), into a collective leave day.
All that was missing was the green light from President Joko Widodo. Well, today we got just that after the president issued an official decree stating that June 23 will be a collective leave day.
Therefore, for this year’s Eid, the holiday starts with the collective leave day on June 23, followed by the actual Eid holiday on June 25-26 and four more collective days on June 27-30.
A collective leave day, or “cuti bersama”, is a term used to describe days that are not officially marked as public holidays but entitles those working in the public sector, and, by extension, most in the private sector, to time off of work without using up annual leave days.
Turning June 23 into a collective leave day was initially a recommendation of the National Police so that the public has additional time to travel back to their hometowns for the annual Eid tradition of mudik. Theoretically, this could spread out the millions of people traveling home over a longer time period, easing the overcrowding of public transportation facilities and vehicles on the roads that typically take place across the country during mudik.
At least 12 people died from fatigue and other health complications during a three-day traffic jam at an intersection called “Brexit” in Central Java in last year’s mudik.
