Unemployment splits top officials

Unemployment splits top officials

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government has dismissed unemployment data and projections
from the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) as
inaccurate and misleading, saying it had launched various
programs to cope with the unemployment time bomb.

Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea
insisted that the government could not accept the data on
unemployment released recently by the BPS and predictions made by
Bappenas, which he said had discredited the government and could
heighten public unrest.

"President Megawati never listens to the BPS's data on
unemployment or Bappenas forecasts on the labor market in the
coming years as they are out of touch with reality. It's as if
the government has done nothing to cope with the unemployment
problem," he told The Jakarta Post.

The BPS data was inaccurate and misleading as the surveys were
conducted randomly and using the wrong methodology," he added
without elaborating.

The two agencies are not directly accountable to the
government.

Bappenas recently published its 2005 government work plan
(RKP) with a prediction that the number of fully unemployed would
increase to 11.2 million in 2005 from 10.8 million in 2004 and
9.1 million in 2003, while the number of disguised unemployed,
that is, people who worked less than 35 hours per week, would
rise to almost 49 million in 2005 from 42 million in 2004 and
38.5 million in 2003.

The unemployment rate has been growing by two percent, or
between two million and three million annually, with many of them
being high school and university graduates.

The BPS also predicted that the work force would increase to
95.5 million in 2005 from the current 91 million. Forty-four
percent, or 42 million, of the work force was employed by the
agricultural sector, 13 percent by manufacturing with the
remaining 42 percent being accounted for by other sectors and the
unemployed.

Minister Nuwa Wea said the government had instead asked
regental and municipal administrations to collect their own data
on unemployment, and to design strategies to help create jobs.

The minister, accompanied by two directors general from his
ministry, said that according to data collected by the Ministry
of Manpower and Transmigration, the number of the jobless this
year was only 9.6 million, with the figure up to January 2003
being 9.1 million, and the remaining 500,000 being those of the
2.5 million new job seekers in 2003 who could not find work.

"Last year, the government successfully ensured a livelihood
for almost 2 million job seekers. Of this two million, more than
400,000 were enrolled in the resettlement program at home, more
than one million were sent overseas or found employment in
manufacturing, and the remaining 600,000 found employment in the
informal sector," he said, adding that the government had
intensified its resettlement and entrepreneurship programs, as
well as its lobbying of developed countries to attract foreign
investors to Indonesia.

Foreign investment rose by 212 percent in January this year
while domestic investment was up by 108 percent. "These new
investments are expected to give jobs to around 10,000 workers,"
he added.

Nuwa Wea conceded that the government had failed to attract
many foreign investors to Indonesia, saying this was due to
security disturbances, the absence of legal certainty and rampant
illegal fees in the regions.

"But, the situation in Indonesia has improved since the first
semester of 2003, and the government is reviewing the regional
autonomy law. More investors are expected to come to Indonesia in
the coming months," he said.