'More science graduates needed'

JAKARTA (JP): A planning expert has said Indonesia must increase the number of students graduating annually from natural sciences and engineering to 65,000 by 2019 -- a rate four times that recorded in 1994.

Agus Pakpahan of the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) told a seminar Saturday the increase would mean more than 1 percent of Indonesia's population would possess scientific and engineering skills -- a percentage on par with that recorded in developed countries.

Pakpahan said research expenditure should also rise from the present 0.3 percent of GDP to 2 percent by the end of 2019, with greater contributions coming from the private sector. An increased funding level would enable Indonesia to survive a free trade environment through improved competitiveness of human resources, he said.

Pakpahan was among a group of researchers who addressed Saturday's seminar on "The Strategies for the Transformation of the Ummat (Islamic community) into an Industrialized Community", held by the Institute for Science and Technology Studies.

About 200 Moslem researchers, educated both locally and abroad, participated in the event which featured Samaun Samadikun, the former head of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences and a professor at the Bandung Institute of Technology.

Samaun's paper on human resource development stressed the need for industry to cooperate with research centers and universities. He identified the support of financial institutions as an integral and necessary component of any country's human resource development.

He said the technologically-advanced countries had used the first and second world wars as well as the Cold War as opportunities to build their "scientific and technological human resources" and the supporting "technostructures".

"Major countries, under the pretext of defense expenditures, pour funds into various research and industrial centers, which then supply equipment and service to their captive market, namely the armed forces," Samaun said.

He suggested comprehensive approaches and support for the development of Indonesia's human resources.

"We have yet to build a strong tradition of human resource development. We're still searching for the mode," he said during a break in the seminar.

"We have yet to develop a clear concept of the kind of 'scientific and technological human resources' -- namely the people who will be able to develop and make use of technology -- we wish to build."

He declined to say whether Indonesia is ready to transform into an industrialized community. "There are no criteria to measure such readiness," he said. "Ready or not, we still have to do it. We need to develop our human resources.

"In the past, we placed great importance on institution building. It's now time for us to build people," he said. "We are never reluctant to pour billions of rupiah into buildings, but we pinch pennies when it comes to paying for our scientific and technological human resources."

Samaun said the Islamic community could play an important role in the endeavor by, among other things, determining the market for science and technology.

The ummat is already established as a market for science and technology, he said, but it does not yet have the capacity to develop these areas.

Other speakers in the seminar were Agus Mahmudi Ismail, Harijono Djojodihardjo and As Natio Lasman, all researchers at the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology and the National Atomic Agency. (swe)