Regions blamed for strikes

Regions blamed for strikes

JAKARTA (JP): As teachers' strikes continued to hit a number
of areas of the country, local administrations were scrambling to
find funds, including commercial loans if necessary, to pay the
teachers' back pay.

On Thursday, thousands of teachers failed to show up for
classes in Madiun regency, East Java, Muna regency, Southeast
Sulawesi, and the town of Lampung, saying they would stay away
until they received their six-months back pay.

In Lampung, the strike could spread to the entire province as
teachers grouped in the Indonesian Teachers Dignity Forum (FMGI)
are campaigning for a province-wide teachers' strike starting on
Sept. 6.

The forum's chairman, Murni Sulaiman, said some 100,0000
strike pamphlets had been printed and these were being
distributed to all 50,000 teachers in the province.

"Our various efforts (to get the back pay) have been futile.
Therefore, we will launch an all-out strike," Murni said.

Nevertheless, striking teachers in Purbalingga regency,
Central Java, resumed teaching again on Thursday after the local
administration promised that they would borrow money from a local
development bank to pay them their back pay soon.

The Muna administration will copy Purbalingga's way of dealing
with the problem. It plans to borrow a total of Rp 8.5 billion
(about US$955,000 million) from state-owned Bank Negara Indonesia
(BNI) at an interest rate of 1.4 percent per month, or 18 percent
per annum.

Muna Regent Ridwan said that the administration's move to take
out a commercial loan to pay the teachers their back pay had been
approved by the regency's legislative council.

"This is the best alternative ... so that we will be able to
pay civil servants' their back pay," Ridwan told Antara.

Another alternative would be using development funds from the
central government to pay the teachers' back pay, and seek bank
loans to finance development projects.

However, the councillors decided that the administration
should borrow money from banks and then ask for additional
education funding from the central government to repay the loan.

Meanwhile in Jakarta, Coordinating Minister for People's
Welfare Jusuf Kalla said that the central government had already
disbursed the funds for the teachers' back pay through the
General Allocation Fund (DAU), but that many regions had used
them for other projects.

"Now we will demand that each regional administration be held
accountable for what happens," the minister said, adding that
local councils could pressure their local administrations to pay
up.

"Local administrations could borrow some money from banks to
fulfill their obligations," the minister added.

Meanwhile, education observers said that the back pay debacle
and the ensuing teachers' strikes proved that the implementation
of regional autonomy lacked sufficient preparation.

"There is a tendency for the central government to want to
fully hand over responsibility to the local administrations,
while the latter are apparently not yet prepared to assume the
responsibility," Ace Suryadi, an education observer from the
University of Indonesia told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Suryadi blamed the central government for the furor, saying
that the government should not have entrusted all educational
affairs, including budget management, to local administrations.

However, former education minister Fuad Hassan disagreed that
the central government was to the one to blame, saying that the
current mix-up over teachers' back pay was only a consequence of
the complex decentralization process.

"This is only an example of problems in the implementation of
regional autonomy." (DJA/02)