Reform the bureaucracy

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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