Govt cancels dismissal of civil servants

Govt cancels dismissal of civil servants

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government has canceled a plan to cut the number of civil
servants by up to 60 percent, but will adopt a stricter
recruitment process for new state employees.

"There will no mass dismissal of existing civil servants but
we shall limit the recruitment of new employees," Coordinating
Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla told a media conference
after a Cabinet meeting on Thursday.

He did not disclose the specific reasons behind the
cancellation, but many have feared the plan would spark
nationwide protest that would be detrimental to political
stability.

The country's bureaucracy currently employs four million civil
servants. State Minister of Administrative Reforms Feisal Tamin
revealed that only 35 percent to 40 percent of state employees
were productive; therefore the government had proposed the mass
dismissal for the sake of efficiency.

A few schemes were designed to reduce the number, such as a
golden handshake for those who had been working for at least 20
years and who were older than 45.

The plan came to the fore after Indonesia's bureaucracy was
rated the worst in the world according to an international survey
published in July last year.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri once likened the country's
bureaucracy to a trash can.

Speaking at the same conference, Feisal admitted that despite
their below-standard quality, the ratio between civil servants
and the general population in Indonesia remained below that in
neighboring countries.

Citing examples, he said that in Malaysia, the number of civil
servants was 3.68 percent of the total population and in
Singapore the figure was 2.48 percent. Indonesia's civil servants
make up only 1.8 percent of the country's population of 215
million.

"We need more civil servants but unfortunately the state
employees we currently have do not live up to the standards. What
we need to do, therefore, is to improve the quality of the
bureaucracy," Feisal said.

He said 72 percent of civil servants were high school
graduates and only 0.5 percent held masters degrees or
doctorates.

"We should set a new standard of education for civil servants;
they should hold at least a bachelor degree, for example," Feisal
said.

Kalla said along with new recruitment standards, the
government would improve the salary and allowances of all civil
servants.

"We consider that positions that carry high levels of
responsibility, such as lighthouse keeper or railway crossing
guard, should receive better allowances," he added.

The minister said that currently the government was devising a
new remuneration system for civil servants.