East Timor to bar outsiders from jobs

East Timor to bar outsiders from jobs

DILI, East Timor (JP): Due to a mounting unemployment problem,
this impoverished province will be closed to job seekers from
other provinces to allow locals to start businesses and fill
available jobs, an official announced yesterday.

Deputy Governor Johanes Haribowo said legislation expected to
go into effect in the near future will also authorize the local
administration to expel jobless migrants.

"In the future, only employed people on assignment will be
allowed to stay in East Timor," he told journalists. "If action
is not taken, the problems that stem from the economic gulf
between migrants and the indigenous people will only worsen."

Social problems in the former Portuguese colony have been in
the spotlight since the highly politicized ethnic rioting late
last year in the wake of the killings of two East Timorese by
Bugis migrants in separate incidents.

The better skilled and better trained people that keep coming
in from other provinces have played increasingly dominant roles
in various fields in the province, observers say.

Haribowo said the restriction on the flow of migrants is
expected to allow locals to fill the jobs available in the
province of 750,000 people.

East Timor, which is lacking in natural resources, has 20,000
job seekers on the waiting list at the local manpower ministry
office.

The unemployment problem is becoming a headache for the local
administration, with an estimated 25,000 new high school
graduates entering the job market every year.

It is estimated that up to 25,000 job seekers from other
provinces have streamed into the territory that integrated with
Indonesia in 1976.

In a bid to ease the problem, the local administration, in
cooperation with the private sector, has sent job seekers mainly
to industrial centers in Java.

Legislator Manuel Carrascalao said yesterday that the
provincial legislative council would complete the bill barring
job seekers from other provinces in about two weeks.

"The bill is being finalized by the legislative council," said
the legislator from the ruling political party, Golkar.

The influential Bishop of the predominantly Roman Catholic
East Timor, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, said yesterday he
supported the bill.

"I hope the regulation will really be put into practice," he
said. (yac/pan)