DPR Member: PPPK Should Not Be Laid Off

If regional fiscal conditions are indeed difficult, efficiency measures should be taken not by sending PPPK workers home, but by cutting non-essential and ceremonial operational spending.

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Member of Commission II of the House of Representatives (DPR RI) Muhammad Khozin has said that government employees on work agreements (PPPK) should not be dismissed.

“PPPK workers should not be sent home because it is already the government’s obligation to pay their salaries as civil servants of the state,” he said in a statement in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Responding to news that PPPK workers are threatened with dismissal as a consequence of budget efficiency measures, he said regional governments should have managed their civil service apparatus from the outset. The addition of PPPK staff must be aligned with actual needs and budget capacity.

According to him, the recruitment of PPPK workers should be based on job analysis, workload, public service needs, and medium-term fiscal capacity. If any one of these components is not taken into account, the appointment of non-civil-servant staff could itself precipitate a crisis.

He said regional governments should be able to find solutions so that budget efficiency does not affect employees, one of which is reducing spending on programmes that have no direct impact on the public.

“For example, reducing official travel and seminars that can be postponed first, as well as scrapping other ceremonial agendas,” he said.

As a legislator overseeing regional autonomy, Khozin urged the Ministry of State Apparatus Utilisation and Bureaucratic Reform, the National Civil Service Agency, and the Ministry of Home Affairs to conduct a national audit of PPPK formations and financing.

He requested that the audit be carried out comprehensively, not only counting the number of employees but also mapping the agencies where they are placed, the service functions they perform, contract duration, real needs, and the composition of personnel spending.

“Including looking at the capacity of regional budgets (APBD) to finance employees until the end of their work agreements,” he added.

“The central government must not approve formations based solely on the number of non-civil-servant staff that need to be managed without ensuring the sustainability of their financing,” he said.

The government is also deemed to need to prepare a classification of regions based on personnel-related fiscal risk. He said regions with low locally generated revenue (PAD), dependence on central transfers, and a large personnel spending ratio should be subject to special oversight before being granted additional formations.

He added that the DPR has pushed for national mapping of high-risk regions so that similar problems do not recur. Commission II has also requested that the rights and status of PPPK workers not be treated as a short-term budget adjustment variable.

He stressed that civil service management must produce a professional bureaucracy and better public services, not create a group of employees trapped in perpetual uncertainty.

“If the government decides to appoint them, then there must be certainty regarding salary sources, performance evaluations, contract extensions, and competency development pathways,” Khozin said.