REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, KUALA LUMPUR -- Thousands of Indonesian workers from the Klang Valley of Malaysia on Saturday went home across the Malacca Strait to celebrate Eid al-Fitr. The Klang Valley includes Kuala Lumpur and suburbs and major cities of Selangor.

At the ASA Niaga Harbor City Pier, it was found many migrants had been waiting since Friday night to book a ticket.

"I bought a ferry ticket back to Aceh Province last week," an Indonesian migrant worker, Aldian, said. Cheap tickets and a comfortable room on the ferry made him choose sea transportation.

Twenty Indonesian migrant workers were preparing to go home with free tickets to Jakarta facilitated by Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) Remittance on Sunday. The ASA Group executive director, Azrin Shaari, said this year some 30,000 Indonesians would travel home in the first six days of the holidays. Shaari revealed that every day the company dispatched 15 ferries to transport 5,000 Indonesians to Dumai Pier and Tanjong Balai Asahan Dock in Indonesia.

"Each ferry accommodates 400 passengers. The journey takes three and a half hours to Dumai, and four and a half hours to Tanjong Balai Asahan," he added.

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Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia, Rusdi Kirana, on Friday was in Kuching to monitor the homebound travellers. "They use their ten-day-long holiday to go home, that's good," he stated.

Regarding the appeal not to use tongkang (wooden boats), he said, "Tongkang can hold only 30 people, I am not surprised if it breaks from excess load. I urge migrant workers to not use it for the trip home," he said.

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