Govt to pay civil servants

Govt to pay civil servants

SURABAYA: A senior central government official here has firmly
denied rumors that the administration would no longer be able to
pay civil servants' salaries in three or four months' time.

Sunarko RM, head of the Civil Servant Affairs Administration
Agency (BAKN), called on the public Monday not to believe the
rumors and said the government would pay the salaries as usual.

Funds for government salaries are usually set aside in the
state budget under the heading of "routine expenditures", he
said, adding that the amount appropriated under the current
budget had not been affected by the economic crisis.

The crisis has only led to a reduction in the amount allocated
to "development expenditures", he said.

Sunarko said development expenditures covered government
agency expansions and the costs of operations and maintaining
facilities.

Citing an example, he said a government department's plans to
build five buildings had to be scrapped under the current budget.

Asked about an apparent shrinkage in the civil servants corps,
Sunarko said the government's personnel office had been adhering
to a "minus growth" policy since 1995.

Under the policy, the personnel office would, for example,
only recruit 60,000 new civil servants following the retirement
of 80,000 government employees, he said.

The ideal number of civil servants in a country is 1 percent
to 1.5 percent of the population. Indonesia now has a total of
four million civil servants, nearly 2 percent of the population.