VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Jakarta. The Malaysian Government will temporarily ban citizens of India, Indonesia, and the Philippines from entering the country starting Monday.

The restrictions will affect those with long-term passes, students, expatriates, permanent residents as well as family members of Malaysians, Defense Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Ismail said the Malaysian government would continue to monitor the situation and could expand restrictions if virus cases escalated in more countries.

Teuku Faizasyah, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Indonesia had made several efforts to anticipate the ban, one of which was proposing a travel corridor.

"Indonesia has proposed a travel corridor within the framework of ASEAN and the status of Indonesia's proposal is currently being studied by ASEAN member countries," Teuku told CNNIndonesia.

He said the ministry suggests forming a travel corridor that applies to all ASEAN countries. Other than that, he said there is not much that can be done while countries are still focused on dealing with the pandemic.

Indonesia comes after the Philippines in having the largest number of coronavirus cases in Southeast Asia, while India is grappling with total infections nearing 4 million.

The Malaysian government will extend large-scale social restrictions until the end of the year as the virus “is still actively spreading across the world,” Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said in a speech on Friday.

Malaysia had also temporarily prohibited the arrival of foreign tourists since March.

Source: CNNIndonesia, Bloomberg.