* Indonesia says regional authorities to gain lockdown
powers
* Says also considering plan to ban mass exodus at end of
Ramadan
* Indonesia sees biggest daily rise in confirmed coronavirus
cases
(Recasts with plans to let regions decide on lockdowns)
By Stanley Widianto, Bernadette Christina and Tom Allard
JAKARTA, March 27 (Reuters) - Indonesia's chief security
minister Mahfud MD said on Friday the national government would
allow regional authorities to impose lockdowns to control the
coronavirus, in a major shift in strategy after previously
resisting tougher restrictions.
The security chief also said the government was mulling a
plan to ban "mudik" - the practice that sees millions of
Indonesians leave towns and cities for their native villages at
the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in May.
The change of tack came after Indonesia, the world's fourth
most populous nation, announced on Friday its biggest one-day
surge in coronavirus cases, up 153 to 1,046.
Indonesia's government has previously been reluctant to
embrace the stricter containment strategies of other nations,
and President Joko Widodo's policy has been to encourage social
distancing while not imposing tighter restrictions on movement.
But its eastern province of Papua defied Jakarta on Thursday
by closing its airports, sea ports and land borders for 14 days
in an attempt to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
After the central government initially sought to over-rule
Papua's moves, Mahfud told reporters on Friday that Jakarta
would now issue a regulation allowing regional governments to
impose a strict quarantine on their territory.
"It will regulate when regional areas can declare movement
limitation, which is commonly known as a lockdown," Mahfud said.
In a later statement obtained by Reuters, Mahfud said the
government was approving a "regional quarantine", not a
lockdown.
Indonesia has only conducted 4,336 tests, a fraction of
those done by many other nations. One model by infectious
disease experts suggests there are as many as 50,000 cases.
Indonesia has a total population of more than 260 million.
SAFE HAVEN
Hundreds of thousands of residents of Jakarta, where most
confirmed cases of coronavirus have been clustered, have left
over the past week for their home villages to find a safe haven,
or after losing their jobs, officials said.
In response, local governments took matters into their own
hands.
The mayor of Tegal, a city in Central Java, this week closed
49 access points and shut public spaces until July 30 after a
local returned from Abu Dhabi with the coronavirus.
"People need to understand the policy I took. If I had to
choose, I'd rather be hated by people than let them die," the
mayor, Dedy Yon Supriyono, was quoted by CNN Indonesia as
saying.
In Papua, the decision to close its borders was taken in
consultation with the police and the military, documents showed.
Papua's four airports and sea ports were closed on Thursday
and remained shut on Friday, a government official said.
Ahmad Syarif Syechbubakr, a Jakarta-based analyst with Bower
Group Asia, said Widodo was "very concerned about the economic
impact of the lockdown" and his advisers saw a risk of social
unrest by millions of informal workers like street hawkers and
labourers if movement is restricted.
The University of Indonesia's Pandu Riono said authorities
must cancel the "mudik."
"Many people going home are likely to come from a place
that's infested with the virus," he said.