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)