RI professionals `not ready for competition'

RI professionals `not ready for competition'

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government should not open the country's labor market to
foreign professionals and managers because locals are not ready
to compete with foreigners, analysts have said.

"We're a hundred years behind the developed nations," Didiek
J. Rachbini, the rector of Mercu Buana University, told The
Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He said that opening the doors to foreign professionals would
put many of the country's managers, doctors and lawyers out of
work, causing even greater unemployment here.

He was commenting on an earlier report in this paper that the
government was facing strong pressure from some 16 nations to
liberalize the domestic labor market as required under the World
Trade Organization (WTO) scheme, agreed in Doha, Qatar, in 2001.

Developed countries, such as the U.S., Japan, Australia,
Singapore and even developing ones, such as China and India, were
demanding the government to revoke existing rulings that limit
the entry of foreign managers and professional workers to work
here. This would also mean that Indonesian professionals and
managers would also be allowed to seek jobs in those countries.

The government is negotiating for a delay in the
liberalization drive until 2005.

But Didiek said that it would be impossible to boost the
quality and skills of local managers and professionals in such a
short period.

He said that if the government had to allow foreign workers to
work here, Indonesia had to also be allowed to export laborers,
such as truck drivers, construction workers and others, to work
in the U.S. and other developed nations.

This group of workers is seen to have a greater chance in
beating out competition in overseas labor markets.

"We should not be dictated to by foreign governments," he
said, adding that the current WTO arrangement was unfair.

During the late 1990s, many university graduates in Indonesia
went on to business schools to earn a master of business
administration, but it turned out that their qualifications could
not match their foreign peers, experts said. Many local
professionals also lack in quality and skills, they said.

The head of the research center at the Ministry of Manpower
and Transmigration, Dyah Paramawartiningsih, said that it could
take half a century before high-level workers were able to
compete with their counterparts from developed nations.

"The capabilities of our professional workers and managers are
very low. There must be something wrong with our education
system, which surely needs to be reformed," said Dyah.

She said that as an example, many university graduates here,
and even those holding PhDs, could not speak English properly and
were not computer literate.

Keeping this in mind, the coordinator of the Indonesian lobby
team for labor liberalization at the WTO forum, Adolf Warrouw,
told the Post that his team had also decided to lobby several
countries to open their doors to laborers from Indonesia.

But Warrouw was quick to add that it would be difficult to
obtain these concessions from developed nations.

"The 16 countries are only interested in professionals, but
nevertheless, we will try our best," he said.