Half of civil servants are unqualified, says minister

Abdul Khalik ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 12/04/2008 7:29 AM  |  Headlines

Responding to discouraging results of recent public service surveys, State Minister for Administrative Reforms Taufiq Effendi revealed half of the country’s four million civil servants were unqualified.

He said his office was preparing to reassign two million unqualified officials to other government jobs in an effort to tackle bureaucratic inefficiencies that leaked money.

“They will undergo a series of training to make them fit for other jobs within the government,” the minister told the press after addressing a World Bank-sponsored seminar on bureaucratic reforms in Jakarta on Wednesday.

“We began this process in 2005, and some 300,000 civil servants will be reassigned to other jobs each year,” he said.

Taufiq said the massive reshuffle had begun as a pilot project surveying three offices — the Finance Ministry, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Audit Body (BPK).

He said of the 63,000 officials at the Finance Ministry, only 30,000 were qualified to do their jobs, adding that the situation was worse at the other two offices.

“We’re not a charitable institution. We can no longer afford to pay people who don’t work properly,” the minister added.

The government spent Rp 123.5 trillion this year paying the salaries of more than four million civil servants -- 17.7 percent of the state budget.

However, Taufiq said none of the unqualified officials would be fired.

He said a previous reshuffle at the Finance Ministry had resulted in state revenue rising 35 percent thanks to reorganized tax regimes.

Taufiq said the minister’s plan was supported by the fact that some 120,000 officials retired every year.

“We still have a very imbalanced distribution of civil servants. In some regions we have an excess of personnel while in many other regions we lack people. That’s why we still recruit some 25,000 qualified people every year,” he said. 

He said more officials were needed in a number of sectors, including agriculture and industry.

Taufiq said officials reassigned from the Finance Ministry would be trained as agricultural consultants and posted to villages throughout the country.

Most surveys conducted on Indonesia’s civil servants have not made for pleasant reading, with reports of corruption and inefficiencies prevalent.

The Governance Assessment Survey, conducted last year by Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University in collaboration with the Partnership for Governance Reform found public services were poor.

Only 20 percent of the interviewed respondents believe human resources at health offices are qualified, while the majority of them say bureaucracy is more concerned with its own needs rather than those of the public.

This year’s survey by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) revealed the public sector had a low integrity score of 5.33 out of a possible 10, far lower than in most other countries.

A report issued on March 4 by the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum cited Indonesia’s poor health and hygiene services and inadequate infrastructure as key disadvantages to attracting foreign visitors.

“With the reforms, ultimately we want to have better public services and attract foreign investors for the betterment of the people,” said Rusdiarto, a senior official at Taufiq’s office.

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