2,000 Irianese to enter bureaucracy

2,000 Irianese to enter bureaucracy

JAKARTA (JP): The government this year plans to recruit 2,000 people from remote Irian Jaya as civil servants, Minister of Administrative Reforms T.B. Silalahi says.

"We will recruit 2,000 Irianese to become civil servants. We will place 1,000 people in Irian Jaya and post another 1,000 to other areas in Indonesia," Silalahi told reporters after meeting President Soeharto on Thursday.

Silalahi quoted Soeharto as saying that the decision was made in order to prepare the local people for competition.

"We'll accept them even if they fall a little below our standards," Silalahi said.

Silalahi said that usually, when the government had job openings for civil servants to be placed in Irian Jaya, the natives of Irian often lose out in competition with people from other provinces.

"The province has been part of Indonesia for 32 years, but the effort to develop it is still inadequate," Silalahi was quoted by Antara as saying.

"This is why we need a new approach to recruiting civil servants there....even in the Armed Forces (ABRI) special treatment exists," he said.

Irianese residing in other provinces may also apply, he said.

There are currently about 32,000 civil servants working in Irian Jaya; most of them came from outside the province. "We noted that only 15 percent in the lower ranks are Irianese. They are even fewer in the higher ranks," Silalahi said.

He said the government also plans to train Irianese civil servants in the province, 4,000 km east of Jakarta, so they can fill higher positions.

Silalahi said the move to increase the number of Irianese in the bureaucracy was not related to the rioting which rocked the province last month. Some experts have blamed the unrest on the province's development deficit.

"The program has been in the pipeline all along," he claimed.

Four people, including a soldier, were killed in the riots in Jayapura, the capital of Irian Jaya, on March 18. The riots started when the body of separatist leader Thomas Wainggai, who died in a Jakarta prison, arrived in Jayapura for burial.

Wainggai was sentenced to 20 years in jail after a 1988 flag- raising ceremony in Jayapura where he proclaimed the state of West Melanesia in Irian Jaya. (swe)