Civil servants detest military-style uniforms
Whether civil servants should wear uniforms is still a matter of public debate. The real and immediate consequence of the requirement, however, is that billions of rupiah in taxpayers' money must be allocated for their uniforms. The Jakarta Post's Bambang Nurbianto looks into the matter in the second of four articles on the issue.
With his body-hugging dark green uniform, Salman, 45, stands out from the other train commuters, who often glance in his direction during the 30-minute trip from Tangerang to Tanah Abang station in Central Jakarta.
"Frankly speaking, I don't like this uniform, not only because it does not fit me, but also because its color is similar to that of a military uniform," the staffer in a city-run junior high school in Senen, Central Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post recently.
"If I had a choice, I'd prefer not to wear it. But my boss told me that I must wear this uniform every Monday," said Salman, who lives in a housing complex in Pondok Aren subdistrict, Tangerang regency, Banten.
Earlier this year, the Jakarta administration started requiring all administration workers to wear the new uniform -- whose color is exactly the same as that of an Army officer's uniform -- to replace the previous apple green uniforms imposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs in the early 1990s.
The color of the old uniform was the same color as the original Civilian Defense Corps uniforms.
Currently, Jakarta administration employees have to wear the dark-green uniform on Mondays, a khaki uniform from Tuesday to Thursday, and batik on Fridays.
Not only does the color make the civil servants' new Monday uniform look militaristic, but the insignia and flashes on several parts of the shirt make civil servant Sulaiman, 38, uneasy wearing it.
"I don't know why the color of our new uniforms is different from the previous one. But to me, it seems that we are still living in a military-ruled country," said Sulaiman, who preferred to wear his old uniform that Monday.
"I have strong reasons for not wearing the uniform. It doesn't fit, the shirt is too large and the trousers are too small. And another reason, I just don't like the color," he said.
The procurement of uniforms sparked protests from civil servants earlier this year because most of them did not fit. As many as 2,200 caps and 300 pairs of trousers and shirts were returned to the City Assets Office for alteration.
The city administration spent Rp 22 billion (US$2.44 million) out of the 2004 city budget to procure uniforms for its 30,000 civil servants alone, or one third of its total number of employees.
Previously, the civil servants were just given the uniform material and money to have them made.
"I don't know why they gave us ready-to-wear uniforms, but we know that some officials received big commissions from the procurement of the uniforms," said a civil servant who wanted his identity withheld.
Both Salman and Sulaiman said that the uniforms did not affect their desire to work or performance. "We wear the uniforms because the administration requires us to do so," Salman said.
But some others wear their uniforms with pride, saying that they give them additional self-esteem and encourage discipline.
"Why do you want to discuss this issue. I think you can see that with the uniforms, we look better and look neat in the office. And people find it easier to tell who we are," said a female civil servant working at City Hall, who was also speaking on condition of anonymity.