`Bill unable to improve human resources'
Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara
Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea has joined the chorus of criticism against the education bill, saying changes are needed to the draft law if the country is committed to improving its human resources enough to compete with counterparts across ASEAN.
"We should not expect a miracle to come from the sky to repair the low quality of our work force. The nation needs to be forward-thinking to clearly set the direction of the national education system.
"This means the government and the House of Representatives must make necessary modifications to the current education bill and design an education curriculum for all education institutions at all levels to solve the serious education-related problems and meet the challenges the nation is facing now and in the future," he said.
Jacob was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting between senior labor officials from ASEAN and its dialog partners China, Japan and South Korea here on Wednesday.
He insisted that all citizens had the right to an education to develop their personality and intelligence.
"But the labor market both at home and overseas requires professional, skilled, intelligent people in the first place, instead of just pious workers." he said, in an apparent reference to the religious requirements being debated in the bill.
He called on the government to simplify the curriculum to help students develop their own talent and expertise from elementary school onward, otherwise the nation would not be able to improve the quality of education and human resources or catch up with developed countries.
Jacob hails from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, whose faction at the House has demanded more discussions on the controversial bill before its endorsement, citing national unity.
Insisting that he was qualified to comment on the bill, Jacob called on all sides, especially the House, the education and religion ministries and all education institutions across the country to face the fact that most of Indonesia's work force was undereducated.
He said 59 percent of the 100 million Indonesian people in the work force only had either an elementary school education or were dropouts. Around 20 percent finished junior high school, 16 percent were high school graduates, 5 percent were university or academy graduates and those not in the work force were mostly uneducated.
The minister asserted that the low quality of human resources had raised problems in finding employment for people both at home and overseas.
"The low quality of education and human resources has weakened our workers' bargaining position vis-a-vis their employers in improving their social welfare. Even more unfortunate, it has contributed to the serious unemployment, which has reached 40 million, 10 percent of which is categorized as open unemployment," he said.
The remaining 90 percent is classified as disguised unemployment, indicated by the fact that they work less than 35 hours per week.
Jacob said further that the low quality of education in the country has also caused Indonesian workers to lack competitiveness overseas, compared to other ASEAN neighbors Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
He admitted that the arrests of 118 -- not 100 as reported earlier -- Indonesian women employed as sex workers in Saudi Arabia, at least 100 others in the Philippines and 12 male workers on death row in Malaysia were evidence that the quality of the country's human resources was at an alarming level.
Citing another example, he said that there were thousands of workers in "training programs" in Japan and South Korea, but those programs were deceiving because the people actually work in small-scale businesses with salaries far lower than the minimum wage in the two countries. The program has been running since 1992.