The government says it will not allow people to return to their hometowns to celebrate the start of the Ramadan fasting month.
“What we announced earlier was for those who are back in their hometowns and want to return to the cities to register themselves with the police,” Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said today at a daily briefing on the MCO.
Ismail was clarifying a misunderstanding of a call for people to register with the police if they wished to travel interstate. The call had been taken to mean that people would be allowed to “balik kampung” for Ramadan, which begins tomorrow.
He said the government had wanted to know how many people intended to travel before deciding whether to allow such movements.
The call for would-be travellers to register with the police came following appeals to the government for help from people who had returned to their hometowns when the MCO came into effect and were now stuck there and wished to return to the city.
He added that the government would only make a decision once there is data on the number of people planning to get back to the cities.