National Road Network Ready for Holiday Travelers

Jakarta (Antara) - All national road network of more than 38,000 km has been ready to accommodate a surging tide of Lebaran holiday travelers this year, Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto has said. "Starting on Friday, July 26, 2013, all national road network was ready for a massive annual holiday exodus this year," the minister said, adding that road repair and maintenance contractors had been instructed to stop working 10 days before Lebaran. Djoko said both regular and periodical road repair work and maintenance, and the capacity building in the form of reconstruction and construction of new roads were the year-long activities. "Every year from March until December there is always road repair and maintenance work along 1,300 km of Java's northern coastal highway, better known and Pantura, because average daily traffic there is high and increasing every year," he noted. According to him, the government allocated the budget amounting Rp1.3 trillion this year, and around 40 percent of which has been spent on the management and repair work of Pantura highway. He admitted that road reconstruction work kept increasing every year because of increasing damage along Pantura highway and Sumatra's eastern trans road. (*)