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.