The Jakarta Population and Civil Registration Agency is guesstimating that some 2.7 million residents would have done the pulang kampung thing and returned back to their villages. The impact of this is pretty obvious when one hits the streets of J-town during the Eid holidays. It is noticeably quieter, there is less traffic, and one can go about their business without too much hassle.
The flip side of this is that when these 2.7 million residents start returning to the Big Durian they tend to bring along family members and friends who have been wowed by the seemingly endless opportunities available in Jakarta. It is thought that the population of Jakarta increases by 100,000 or so in the weeks after Eid.
The authorities in Jakarta have already stated unequivocally that they will be running a series of raids with the first of these slated for 23 October 2008. Any one caught without the necessary documentation will be sent back to whatever village they came from.
The influx of new residents is expected to see Jakarta's official population reach 9.1 million. This figure does not include the surrounding satellite cities of Bekasi, Tangerang, Bogor, or Depok.
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