Two volunteers – Dery Setiawan and Septian Febrianto – scare passersby with their appearance. Due to a coronavirus epidemic, a village in Indonesia has decided to enlist the services of volunteers dressed as ghosts to scare residents and keep them indoors.
Since the end of March, authorities in the village of Kepuh on the island of Java have been using “ghosts” to disperse people to their homes. According to Indonesian folklore, ghost pokongs are the souls of deceased people who were unable to reach the afterlife. There are currently 4,500 registered cases of coronavirus infection in Indonesia, with 400 deaths. But experts warn that there could be many more infected people in the country.
Journalists from the Reuters agency, who visited this village to observe how the “pokongs” work, report that this tactic by the authorities initially had the opposite effect – people began to go out into the streets to see the “ghosts”. But locals say things calmed down after volunteers dressed as ghosts started appearing in unexpected places and at unexpected times. “After the ‘pokongs’ appeared on the streets, children stayed home with their parents,” says local resident Karno Supadmo, adding that people no longer congregate on the streets after evening prayers. Andzhar Panka, a security guard at the local mosque, says the initiative has worked because it shows people visually that the virus is deadly.
The idea of sending “ghosts” into the streets came from a local youth organization, which coordinated its efforts with the police. “We wanted to do something new, unusual – but everyone is afraid of Pokong,” said Anjar Punkaningtyas, head of the youth organization, in an interview with Reuters.
Police officers in India wear helmets shaped like the novel coronavirus. Indonesian President Joko Widodo has not yet announced a nationwide lockdown, and experts are concerned that without stricter self-isolation measures, the health system may not be able to cope with the growing number of cases. The Keppuk village leader says people are still unaware of what needs to be done to stop the spread of the coronavirus and do not want to change anything. “They find it difficult to stay at home,” he says. Indonesia is not the only country taking unusual measures to warn the public about the threat of coronavirus. In India, some police officers have begun wearing helmets in the shape of the virus itself as a visual reminder of Covid-19.
Traffic policemen in India are also reminding people of the virus.