Reform the bureaucracy

I was really amazed by recent comments made by State Minister of Administrative Reforms T.B. Silalahi published in The Jakarta Post on Jan. 20 which indicated that once again the nation's real problems were not being addressed.

A few days ago, the minister said that in order to streamline the bureaucracy and reduce government spending, the number of directors general and inspectors general would be reduced. Considering that their salary is approximately Rp 1 million per month (or US$100 per month) and that they account for only about 0.1 percent of the whole civil service, I really don't think that it would help much to balance the government's budget.

What is critically needed is a complete overhaul of the civil service to provide for an efficient and clean bureaucracy.

Civil servants' salaries in this country have never been on par with the private sector and have consistently declined in real terms since they are only partially adjusted for inflation. As a result, for the last 15 years, a very high percentage of new recruits have been comprised of people who are either not bright enough to find lucrative jobs in the private sector, or worse, give bribes in order to be selected for a particular position which can bring them large (illegal) profits.

In order to have a clean and efficient bureaucracy, Singapore pays its civil servants higher wages than the private sector while Malaysian civil servants earn 10 to 15 times more than their Indonesian counterparts.

We have repeatedly been told that the government cannot afford to increase the salaries of civil servants but, as a result, corruption has become widespread and no real effort has been made to combat it. Indeed, as Silalahi said a few months ago, corruption is not unique to Indonesia but, let's face it, there are few countries in the world where corruption has reached our level.

The bureaucracy is also often criticized for its low performance. But since there is no merit system within the bureaucracy, what incentive do civil servants have to be achievers? Whether a civil servant works 60 hours per week or one hour per month makes no difference to his or her salary. It also has little effect on his or her chances for career advancement since what is taken into consideration is not what you do but how many years you have been in the system -- and sometimes who your connections are.

As the recent economic crisis has highlighted, it is high time to take drastic steps to create a clean and efficient bureaucracy whose duty should be to serve this nation to the best of its ability. If this does not happen, economic reforms and billions of dollars will just go down the drain.

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