Jakarta holiday blues

Nothing better illustrates the Indonesian penchant for extending official holidays than the long and extensive media coverage of arus balik -- people returning to the capital city after the Idul Fitri holiday.

For more than a week now, newspaper readers and television viewers in Jakarta have been presented with coverage of throngs of people jostling at bus and railway stations in the city and crowding roads in packed vehicles, braving bad weather and all sorts of inconvenience, simply to get away from the city. After the first few days, similar scenes can be seen taking place in provincial cities as the surge of people takes place in the opposite direction -- away from the provinces and back to the capital.

It must be admitted that for the overwhelming majority of people in this country, who are Muslims, Idul Fitri, or Lebaran, has been one of the most important holidays for as long as people can remember. The day marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadhan and is celebrated not only in this country, but all over the Muslim world as a day of victory -- over oneself and one's passions, and as a token of man's submission to God's will.

In acknowledgment of this religious significance -- and at the same time taking some economic benefit from millions of people traveling and spending money in faraway towns and rural areas -- the government has, since last year, decided to extend the normal two-day Lebaran holiday to one week or more, as the occasion demands, declaring the extra days "collective paid leave." The idea, presumably, is to make official something that people have been doing all along anyway: In practice, for many workers in Jakarta the Lebaran holiday has never been limited to a mere two days.

Anticipating the expected, however, the authorities warned that sanctions would be taken against anyone found to be absent from work after the officially approved holiday was over. Civil servants absent on the first day of work for no acceptable reason would lose the regular pay rise they would normally receive for one period -- which, by the way, was a mere Rp 10,000 to Rp 20,000, per day depending on the pay scale.

As Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso and State Minister of Administrative Reforms Feisal Tamin discovered, the threat of sanctions proved ineffective for many civil servants. That amount of money, after all, would buy an employee little more than a simple lunch. Perhaps to still the public's criticism of the insignificance of the amount, Feisal warned that punishment also meant that offending civil servants' records would be marked accordingly, which could affect their career in the long term.

Harmless as the habit of adding a few days to official holidays may seem to some, the tendency can do serious harm to the public interest, not least to business and commerce. Complaints have been heard during the first few days after the recent public holiday of long lines of people waiting in vain to be served at government offices. There were reports of e-mail and other modern services that failed to work. In all of this, business and commerce are the worst affected.

It is high time that everyone, especially this country's civil servant corps -- and in the private sector as well -- understands that time lost means not only money lost, but opportunities as well. Punctuality and a positive work ethic are therefore essential if this nation is to fulfill its ambition to enter the ranks of modern nations.