Analyst Claims One Day of Weekly WFH Could Be a Pretext for Fuel Price Hike
Public policy analyst Agus Pambagio doubts the effectiveness of a one-day-per-week work-from-home (WFH) policy in saving energy. Agus even suspects that WFH is a pretext for raising fuel prices.
He assesses that there is no clear data to execute if this policy is truly implemented.
He gives an example: if this regulation is applied to civil servants (ASN), data is needed on how many ASN use private or public vehicles across Indonesia.
“Each district/city must report how many ASN commute by vehicle. How many per day? Then how many use public transport. That must be calculated,” Agus explained when contacted on Monday (30/3).
“I doubt its effectiveness in saving fuel. Because there is no economic or anthropological data that the estimate can produce such savings. Is there really significant savings? Compared to work effectiveness and productivity. From a policy perspective, it doesn’t have much impact,” he added.
As a reference, Agus cites WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, it cannot be done by all sectors.
“The industrial sector definitely cannot because they must work to chase orders. So production and manufacturing sectors cannot. Many private companies closed at that time too. So practically, it was not effective,” he said.
The public service or government sector can implement it, said Agus. However, task division becomes a separate homework.
“Our online systems are not sophisticated. There still needs to be guards at offices, sub-districts, and villages. If the public needs services, not everyone is accustomed to online and not all regions in Indonesia,” he stated.
On the other hand, Agus views the one-day-per-week WFH discourse as possibly a stepping stone to raise fuel (BBM) prices.
“Because with the war case, fuel prices could rise. If not wanting to raise, reduce fuel. What does that mean? We queue. Only two choices. Well, this WFH might be used as a reason, ‘We (the government) have made efforts, so (fuel) must rise. If so, better to raise, goods available. If not raised, goods unavailable, what then?’” he concluded.