City needs 14,000 new employees

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With some 94,000 civil servants, the city administration should have more than enough staff to serve some 8.5 million people, but Jakarta Manpower Bureau Murdiman says the city plans to recruit some 14,000 more staff over the next three years.

"Although we are already overstaffed, we have to recruit new employees for positions that must be filled by young people," Murdiman said on Wednesday.

According to City Hall spokesman Tjatur Laswanto, the ideal number of employees working for the administration would be around 70,000, which meant the city already had too many workers.

Jakarta, like other provinces across the country, had to accommodate thousands of civil servants from ministries disbanded by former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid in 1999. Most of them were senior and too old to work at the subdistrict level.

According to Murdiman, the new employees would be made up of teachers, nurses, staff at the subdistrict level and public order officers.

He said the city administration had wanted to recruit all 14,000 employees this year, but could not do so as recruitment levels were set by the central government.

"Next year, we are only allowed to recruit some 9,500 new employees -- 3,000 teachers, 3,000 nurses and 3,500 employees to fill other positions," said Murdiman, adding that the city administration was still hoping that it would be permitted to recruit more employees next year.

From 2000 to 2004, the city administration applied a "zero- growth recruitment policy" -- which meant that the number of new recruits did not exceed the number of employees retiring.

City Council budget commission member Igo Ilham said earlier that the plan to recruit new employees would only place further strain on the 2006 city budget.

In the 2006 draft city budget now being deliberated by the City Council, Governor Sutiyoso has increased spending from some Rp 14.3 trillion (US$1.6 billion) in 2005 to Rp 17.51 trillion in 2006.

He has also allocated Rp 2.2 trillion for improvements in public welfare and the recruitment of new employees.