Jakarta holiday blues

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.