Government plans to recruit one million civil servants

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is planning to hire approximately one million new civil servants over the next three years, mostly for the education and medical sectors, to serve in remote areas across the country.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla said on Tuesday that the increase was consistent with population growth and would provide better services to the public in those sectors.

"We have to improve the quality of the country's human resources by offering better health services and better education," Minister of Home Affairs Hari Sabarno said.

"Currently, we need about 512,000 medical workers and teachers, but we will need more in the future as the population grows," Jusuf Kalla said.

He added that he and his team were now preparing a report on the new recruitment numbers, which should be ready within the next two weeks.

State Minister for Administrative Reform Feisal Tamin said that over 550,000 teachers and medical workers would retire in the next five years.

The government's data also shows that right now, there are 3,541,961 state employees serving approximately 215 million people in the country. They account for only 1.6 percent of the total population.

"Our percentage is far behind other countries in Asia, such as Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam. Therefore, we want to increase the number to at least 2 percent of the total population in the next three years," said Feisal Tamin.

He added that in Malaysia, the number of civil servants reaches 3.7 percent of the population, while in Brunei Darussalam, it reaches almost 12 percent.

With a population growth rate of 1.5 percent per year, it is predicted that in 2007, Indonesia will have nearly 230 million citizens.

Two percent of the country's total population would mean approximately 4.5 million civil servants.

This new policy contradicts the government's previous statement that it would maintain zero growth in the number of civil servants -- not recruiting more than the number of retired employees, which another report puts at approximately 110,000 employees per year.

Earlier, the zero growth policy was applied to make civil servants work more efficiently.

Feisal Tamin said that the recruitment process would be done according to the government's national standards and by each regional government under the autonomy law.

"Part time and non-permanent medical workers and teachers will be prioritized in the recruitment process, but that does not mean that they will be accepted directly," Feisal added.

Jusuf Kalla said that the government would finance the new recruitment from the state budget but he did not want to elaborate on a specific amount of money.