Bureaucrats hopefuls get mystical in job search

Bureaucrats hopefuls get mystical in job search

The lengths to which civil servant hopefuls will go to pass
the recruitment test know no bounds, including spiritual.

In Surabaya, several civil servant applicants said they had
sought hocus-pocus blessings from witch doctors for help passing
the test.

"A couple of days ago I visited a witch doctor in Sidoarjo.
After a consultation, he asked me to give him the pencil I was
going to use during the test," one applicant said.

He said the witch doctor engraved a mantra on the pencil to
help him guess the right answers

Another applicant said he was confident about beating out
thousands of other applicants with the help of a witch doctor.

After a recent consultation, he was given a bottle of sugar
water and told to drink it several hours before taking the test.
Apparently this will help him correctly answer the questions.

These two and many other applicants resorted to the mystical
arts for an edge in the fierce competition to be accepted into
the civil service.

In Surabaya alone, almost 17,000 people applied on Wednesday
for just 150 positions in the East Java provincial and Surabaya
city administrations.

"We are just hoping for a little luck (with the witch
doctors). Look at the competition. A person like me without
connections or money for bribes has little hope of being
accepted," one applicant said. -- Antara