Latief makes changes for Indonesia's workers

Latief makes changes for Indonesia's workers

JAKARTA (JP): The ink on his decree to raise the minimum wages was barely dry when Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief disclosed his intention to raise the level even further next April.

"My goal is to lift the minimum wages to as high as the minimum physical need and this must start as of April," Latief told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview.

Within the first year of his job, Latief managed to raise the minimum wage levels in the country to almost the level of minimum physical requirement, which is really the bare minimum subsistence level.

Now, almost completing his second year and entering his third, he is changing the yardstick, going beyond simply minimum physical requirements into minimum basic needs, which also covers health and education needs.

This he will phase in starting in April. In Jakarta, the daily minimum wage level will be increased to Rp 4,600 from Rp 3,800.

Latief said that by the end of the current Sixth Five Year Plan, the minimum wages will be as high as the basic needs. "This means a worker, with his monthly salary, will be able to cover all his daily needs.

A former businessman with strong business intuition (he built the Sarinah Jaya business empire from scratch), Latief said there are no excuses whatsoever for companies not granting their workers the minimum wage levels set by the government.

He also confirmed that Indonesia has no intention of remaining a safe haven for foreign companies looking for cheap labor as it has been in the past, often at the expense of depressing the wages level.

Latief promised to get tough with employers who violate the minimum wage level. He acknowledged that the high "invisible" costs of doing business in Indonesia has played a big factor in causing companies to keep wages low to make savings on their overall costs.

But the wage level has not monopolized Latief's preoccupation.

The minister has also been busy with designing programs to upgrade the skills of Indonesian workers, about 76 percent of whom have only primary education background.

He recently introduced his apprenticeship program, using the ministry's vocational training centers as the core of the scheme and enlisting the participation of companies.

This, he views, is a short cut to strengthening the skills of Indonesian workers and therefore enhance their productivity.

Then there is the biggest headache of all -- unemployment, which is estimated at over 29 million if one includes the underemployed rural workers.

Latief said he hopes that many of the programs he initiated will all be running well by the time his five-year appointment in the cabinet is up in 1998.

"I want to be able to do 'a little' something for workers," he said.

He also had this to say in answer to his critics who repeatedly attacked him for his union policy. "I think it is wrong when certain people at home and abroad criticize the government merely over labor organization issue because it constitutes a small part of the overall labor problems facing Indonesia." (rms)