Education reform needed: Minister

Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta

The educational system and national training programs must be reformed to improve the quality of human resources and make the workforce more competitive, otherwise unemployment will only worsen over the next five years, says a minister.

"The number of unemployed people will almost double to 16.5 million in 2009 from the current 9.1 million if we are only able to maintain the status quo. We must do something new to create more jobs to help solve the unemployment problem," manpower minister Jacob Nuwa Wea said during the opening ceremony for a workshop on unemployment here on Tuesday.

Nuwa Wea said the next government had to reform the educational system and improve the national standard for students at all levels, to allow Indonesia to catch up to other member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in terms of education.

"Indonesia ranks last among the 10 ASEAN countries in education and this is a really serious problem. In the next five years, the number of unemployed will reach 16.5 million, and 60 percent of these will be male and elementary school graduates. Only 4.7 percent of the workforce will be university and academy graduates," he said.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Dorodjatun Koentjoro- Jakti also recently warned that workers from other ASEAN countries would dominate Indonesia's domestic labor market unless Indonesia improved the quality of its workforce over the next 10 years.

The coordinating minister said almost 70 percent of the labor force never graduated from high school, which made the country's workforce less productive than other countries.

Nuwa Wea acknowledged that ASEAN was unable to implement the ASEAN free-trade agreement in 2003 because several members, including Indonesia, were not ready to liberalize their labor markets.

"Indonesia is not ready to open its domestic labor market to foreign workers because a majority of our workforce is not competitive and opening the market would certainly cause chaos at home," he said.

He said the unemployment rate could be brought down to 4 percent if a greater percentage of the workforce was educated and had the necessary skills to compete in a globalized world.

"The number of job seekers has reached 9.1 million because they cannot meet the demand for skilled workers both at home and overseas. The domestic labor market and many developed countries are in need of skilled workers but we have been unable to meet market demand because of the low quality of the job seekers," he said.

He said many developed countries had sought midwives, nurses and skilled workers in the mining sector from Indonesia over the last decade, but Indonesia was unable to meet the demand because of its shortage of qualified workers.

"The next government has to make the education issue its top priority to help solve the human resource crisis. It also has to introduce employment-friendly investment policies to help create job opportunities," he said, adding that regional administrations should also play an active role in formulating policies to create job opportunities.