55,000 civil service posts open

JAKARTA (JP): The government plans to recruit 55,000 new civil servants in the current 1995/96 fiscal year as vacancies become available chiefly through the retirement of existing employees.

The chief of the Civil Service Administration Agency, Soenarto, said that 26,000 positions, or 47 percent of the vacancies, are for teachers to be employed at government-run schools, Antara reported.

"This is to prevent a shortage of teachers which has been widely rumored," Soenarto told reporters on Monday.

Some 9,000 vacancies are for positions in Second Level Regional Administrations (regency and mayoralty offices) and another 6,000 for medical personnel, he said.

The government has maintained a freeze on any increase in the size of the civil service over the past few years as it strived to streamline the administration and save costs.

Soenarto said that the recruitment process is handled by each government agency concerned, with the process beginning simultaneously yesterday. "We hope that the results are reported to us by next March," he said.

Meanwhile, Burhanuddin Anwar Tajibnapis, an assistant to the state minister of administrative reform, explained that 2,000 of the new positions are in the East Timor provincial administration.

Of these 2,000 vacancies, 85 percent have been reserved for native East Timorese and the rest for non-East Timorese.

The native East Timorese could eventually be posted outside the region, he added. (emb)