Professional standard a must: Govt

JAKARTA: Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea underlined on Saturday the importance of adopting international professional standards.

"We have not yet developed competence standards that should be applied at any work field," Nuwa Wea was quoted by Antara.

Delivering his keynote speech at a seminar on "National Opportunity and HRD Threats in the Free Market Era", Nuwa Wea said that despite the current professional quality development scheme, its contribution was minimal in preparing professional workers.

He cited as example that out of 1,000 vacancies, only 25 applicants met the required qualifications. "This shows that the quality of Indonesian workers is very low."

Data shows that of the 210 million-strong population, 100.78 million were workers in 2002. The workforce was dominated at 59.06 percent by workers with a low-level education -- or elementary school graduates and dropouts -- 17.49 percent by junior high school graduates, 19.33 percent by senior high school graduates, 2.21 percent by workers with one, two and three-year vocational certificates and the remaining 2.69 percent by university graduates.

In comparison, workers in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines with a university-level education constitute approximately 10 percent of the workforce. -- Antara