Rp 80 trillion needed for fired discharged civil servants

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government would require the huge sum of up to Rp 80 trillion (US$9.5 billion) to cover the severance payments of tens of thousands of civil servants dismissed for being unproductive.

Sofwan Chudhorie, a member of House of Representatives Commission II on home affairs, from the National Awakening Party (PKB) faction, said the amount would be earmarked for such payments.

"The House budgetary committee will discuss soon with the National Development Planning Agency how to provide the funds, and we hope that they will be ready in the next fiscal year," Sofwan told The Jakarta Post after a meeting with State Minister of Administrative Reforms Feisal Tamin.

He was quick to add that the presence of a large number of underemployed civil servants was intolerable, as it would only add to the burden of the already cash-strapped government. "Reform of the bureaucracy must be achieved at all costs," he emphasized.

Earlier in the meeting, Minister Feisal told lawmakers that the government was mulling over a number of possible options that could be taken to gradually dismiss tens of thousands of civil servants, all involving a huge sum of money to be withdrawn from government coffers.

"We have prepared all that is necessary for reform of the bureaucracy; what we need now is provision of funds, which will require approval from the House," Feisal said.

He said that the funds would be earmarked for severance payments to one percent to two percent of around 3.6 million civil servants across the country.

"I must concede that up to 55 percent of our civil servants do not perform their daily tasks properly," he added.

A few schemes have already been devised by the government by way of reform of the bureaucracy, such as golden handshakes for those who have worked for at least 20 years and who are older than 45.

Bappenas chairman Kwik Kian Gie said recently that 55 percent of civil servants across the country should be dismissed for not performing their daily tasks properly, and urged President Megawati Soekarnoputri to embark on speedy reform of the bureaucracy.

Feisal has repeatedly complained that 60 percent of the country's civil servants are both unproductive and unskilled, and has proposed laying off 40 percent of them. However, his proposal was rejected due to a lack of funds to cover severance payments.

On Monday, he disclosed that the government had been paying the salaries of about 109,000 civil servants whose whereabouts were unknown.

The government has been paying out more than Rp 111.7 billion per month (US$13 million) in salaries to absentee employees.

The figures surfaced after the government started a drive to update the data on all civil servants as part of its attempts to revamp the bureaucracy.

Indonesia's bureaucracy was rated the worst in the world, according to an international survey published in July last year.

Despite the inefficiency, Indonesia still lags behind other neighboring countries in terms of ratio between civil servants and total population. In Malaysia, civil servants are 3.68 percent of the total population and in Singapore the figure stands at 2.48 percent. Civil servants here account for only 1.8 percent of the country's population of 215 million.