Hundreds of city employees restless over new structure

JAKARTA (JP): The planned restructuring of the city administration that will affect some 200 civil servants in the city's Economic Supervision Agency has left some of them seemingly reluctant to perform their normal duties on Monday.

They said their agency was to be merged with other agencies in the city, and, therefore, there was no point in them working overly hard.

Some of them said that they could not concentrate on their work anymore as their current jobs were on the line following the dissemination of a draft bylaw on the proposed structuring of the city administration.

"There's no point in working seriously as we have no specific jobs any more," one of the civil servants said.

Although they disagreed with the planned bylaw, they claimed they could not speak out as their superiors in the city government had "forced" them to agree to the new arrangement.

The Economic Supervision Agency is currently charged with several tasks, including checking the prices and supplies of staple foodstuffs in traditional markets, and maintaining stocks of staple foodstuffs in the city's warehouses.

Whenever there is a shortage of a particular staple foodstuff, the agency orders the warehouses to release more supplies onto the market.

It also supervises and provides training for traders in the informal sector, including street traders.

According to the draft bylaw, the city will amalgamate the current 29 agencies and 15 offices into 24 agencies and eight offices respectively.

In addition, the city governor will only be assisted by one deputy governor, compared to four now.

The Economic Supervision Agency is one of the agencies that is to be dissolved, and the employees from the agency will be transferred to two other related agencies, namely the Industry and Trade Agency and the Cooperatives and Small Enterprises Agency.

The last two agencies have been newly established by the city administration and were formerly the provincial offices of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises.

Due to the regional autonomy program, several offices of the ministries, along with thousands of their employees, have been handed over to the provincial administrations, including the Jakarta administration.

Meanwhile, councillor Ugiek Sugihardjo from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle said the City Council would reject the proposed bylaw if it had the potential to cause suffering for many people, especially ordinary people.

"We will reject it or review it if some functions of the city administration in dealing with the public are to be terminated," said Ugiek, a member of the council's Commission B for economic affairs, on Monday.

Governor Sutiyoso insisted that the merger of the different agencies would not erase their functions.

"The functions of the current agencies will subsist in the new agencies," Sutiyoso said at a council plenary meeting on Monday held to discuss the proposed new structure. (jun)