Govt rejects proposal to increase salaries of customs personnel
Govt rejects proposal to increase salaries of customs personnel
Rendi A. Witular
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
The government has turned down proposals to increase the
income of customs officials as part of the reform program to make
the country's customs offices clean and professional.
The government's decision was immediately welcomed by experts
who said that there was no guarantee that higher wages would make
officials at the notoriously corrupt agency shun corruption and
collusion.
Head of the reform program for customs personnel integrity at
the Directorate General of Customs and Excise Oentarto Wibowo
regretted the government's move, saying that the decision was a
setback for the current reform program at the customs office.
"We cannot fully apply the reform program if there are no
attempts to improve the welfare of customs personnel. The rampant
corruption at customs offices is partly due to their low
salaries," said Oentarto.
Oentarto's argument was slammed by Muhammad Ikhsan, of the
Institute of Economic and Social Research at the University of
Indonesia, saying that higher income was no guarantee that
customs personnel would renounce their corruptive practices.
"Experience has taught this nation that breaches of public
trust by bureaucrats and civil servants have little to do with
the their pay check but more with their mentality," said Ikhsan.
In the 1970s, he said, the government once increased salaries
for customs personnel by up to 900 percent. However, corruption
at custom offices is commonplace until today.
Ikhsan suggested that customs officials should first of all
demonstrate how well they perform so that the public may decide
whether or not they deserve a higher salary.
"There is no guarantee that if the government increases their
salaries, they won't commit corruption and collusion," added
Ikhsan.
The directorate's reform task force had proposed three schemes
to increase the welfare of customs officials, but all were
rejected by the Ministry of Finance.
The first proposal was to raise the allowance to 300 percent
higher than that of other directorates general under the
ministry. The ministry dismissed the idea.
Thinking that the rejection was probably caused by the tight
state budget, the directorate then proposed another scheme which
they thought would not burden the state budget: that is to impose
a "clearance fee" on importers to clear their goods through
customs.
The funds collected from the clearance fee was expected to be
used to supplement the customs personnel's official salaries, but
again the ministry rejected the proposal saying that such a fee
was against the current customs law.
Another proposal that was rejected was to give a housing
allowance, and health and life insurance for the low ranking
personnel and field operators.
The only proposal agreed upon by the ministry was a financial
reward for those who succeed in curbing smuggling attempts. The
reward amounts to 20 percent of the value of smuggled goods. But
analysts say the reward is not actually a new policy as the
practice had been approved by the government for many years,
although it has never been acknowledged publicly.
The current wage packages received by customs personnel are
actually higher than those received by civil servants working in
other ministries.
As an illustration, a fresh university graduate at the customs
office receives a wage package consisting of a basic salary and
an allowance of at least Rp 1.3 million (US$144) per month, while
other civil servants only receive Rp 700,000 per month.