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JAKARTA: Indonesian President Joko Widodo is facing mounting public pressure to sack Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto amid a controversial response to the coronavirus pandemic, as cases rise and Jakarta becomes the country’s epicenter.

Putranto has been under fire for downplaying the outbreak when countries in the region have reported cases of patients with travel history to Indonesia and before the first two coronavirus positive cases in the country were confirmed in early March.

In early February, he called a Harvard report on the country’s response “insulting.” The report suggested that Indonesia should have reported confirmed infection cases and there could be undetected cases, using a scientific calculation based on extensive air travel between Indonesia and Wuhan. Putranto said Indonesia did not record any cases of infection due to the power of prayers.

“I do not pay my taxes only to be told by the health minister to pray in times of such outbreak,” Ricky Gunawan, the director of Jakarta-based advocacy group Community Legal Aid Institute (LBH Masyarakat), told Arab News on Wednesday.

LBH Masyarakat is part of a civil society coalition that has urged Widodo to dismiss the minister. The coalition wrote in a statement on Tuesday that Putranto, as the highest health authority in the country, is responsible for the sluggish response to the outbreak and the increasing rate of infection, which includes his colleague, Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi.

“The health minister since the start has been showing an arrogant attitude, anti-science and continued to downplay the problem, which resulted in people being unattentive to the outbreak,” the coalition wrote.

A hashtag calling for Putranto’s dismissal was also trending on Twitter earlier this week after he was accused of using an event to discharge patients from hospital for public relations benefits on Monday. He ignored the president’s call on Sunday for the public to exercise social distancing.

“We urge the president to replace the health minister with a figure who has a better understanding of public health, who is sensitive to the crisis and will guide us through this worst health crisis,” the coalition said.

The government spokesman for the outbreak, Achmad Yurianto, said Indonesia had 55 new infections on Wednesday with 30 of them found in Jakarta, bringing the national tally to 227. Yurianto added that 11 patients had recovered, while nine had died so far.

As infections have spread beyond Jakarta and Java — the country’s most populated island — Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan has suggested a city lockdown.

Widodo, whose official residence is the Bogor Palace outside of Jakarta, reaffirmed on Monday that the government was not considering a lockdown, even as neighboring Malaysia and the Philippines have taken that drastic step to curb the spread of the virus.

“I have to emphasize that a lockdown policy at the national or regional level is the central government’s authority. Regional governments cannot issue such policy,” Widodo said, in a move that was widely perceived as a jab towards Baswedan, who has garnered public support for his swift response
to the outbreak.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Southeast Asia office issued a statement on Tuesday urging governments to urgently launch aggressive measures to combat the infectious disease as more clusters of virus transmission are being confirmed and some countries are heading towards community transmission.

“The situation is evolving rapidly. We need to immediately scale up all efforts to prevent the virus from infecting more people,” said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director of the WHO Southeast Asia office.

The Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that as of March 20, Indonesia would suspend its visa-free and visa-on-arrival policy for all countries for a month and that foreigners must obtain a visa to visit the country by providing a health certificate issued by their health authorities.