Lack of staff blamed for poor services

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Most subdistricts in the capital are understaffed, the Jakarta administration said on Tuesday in explanation of poor public services in the capital.

"We need more staff for our subdistricts. The last time we recruited employees was in 1998," City Regional Administration Bureau head Agus Salim Utud said at City Hall.

Jakarta residents often complain about the poor public services in the capital of about 12 million people.

Agus said a lot more responsibility would be handed to subdistricts next year when the administration decentralized its authority to manage sanitation, health and public order.

Every subdistrict and district will be required to draw up their own programs, implement them and file report on the programs starting next year. Every subdistrict will receive Rp 1.7 billion in funds, while each district will receive Rp 4 billion.

"We have proposed the recruitment of new subdistrict staff to the City Personnel Bureau, but perhaps the recruitment will not be possible until next year because we will need a new budget allocation," Agus said.

He said each subdistrict should have at least 19 employees to fill various positions, including subdistrict head, deputy head, secretary and subsection heads.

In reality, however, almost every one of the 267 subdistricts in the capital are understaffed, including 145 subdistricts that have fewer than 10 employees.

"It is ironic that the administration is now overstaffed with more than 100,000 personnel after taking on about 40,000 civil servants from the information ministry and the social welfare ministry," Agus said.

Former president Abdurrahman Wahid scrapped the information ministry and changed the social affairs ministry into a non- portfolio department in 1999. The civil servants at the two ministries were assigned to other ministries and regional administrations around the country.

Though the ministries were reinstated by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in October 2004, the reassigned civil servants were not moved back to the ministries.

According to Agus, the ideal number of civil servants for the city administration was 60,000.

"Unfortunately, we cannot assign the idle civil servants to help fortify the subdistricts because most of the civil servants from the two ministries are relatively high ranking," he said.

City Secretary Ritola Tasmaya said the administration had yet to solve its overstaffing problem.

"We are considering the possibility of assigning lower ranking civil servants to help the subdistricts," he said.

Councillor Achmad Suaidy of Commission A for legal and administrative affairs recommended that the administration offer civil servants early retirement in order to alleviate the burden on the city budget.

The administration spent Rp 3.52 trillion, or more than 30 percent of its 2004 budget of Rp 11.49 trillion, on the salaries of city employees.