Suherdjoko and Agus Maryono, The Jakarta Post, Semarang, Purwokerto | Mon, 11/02/2009 1:48 PM
The central and regional administrations will require around 325,000 new staff this year, a senior official said on Sunday.
Of this figure, he added, 50,000 were required to occupy posts in central government offices, while the remaining 275,000 were for local administrations across the country. "What we need are human resources for basic services and technical staff," Administrative Reforms Ministry employment chief Supardiyana said recently in Semarang, Central Java.
"We will accept applications who are D (diploma) 1, 2 and 3, Strata 1 and 2 graduates. There will only be a small number of high school graduates accepted for recruitment in certain areas such as Papua, where university graduates are still rare," he said.
At present, 67 percent of the more than 4 million civil servants in Indonesia have completed high school.
Civil servants with high school diplomas would gradually be assigned for internal service at government agencies, but not to public service posts, Supardiyana said.
Their numbers would continue to drop as they will be retiring, he added.
Indonesia currently has around 4 million civil servants, constituting 1.7 percent of the population (of 230 million), Supardiyana said.
In neighboring Malaysia, there were 1 million civil servants in 2007, constituting around 4 percent of its population of 26 million, whereas in Singapore, civil servants made up around 3.5 percent of the population, he added.
Supardiyana could not say what his office would do to address the problem with the recruitment of contractual employees, which was canceled in 2005 because of technical problems.
"There are currently around 928,000 honorary *contractual* staff, 80 percent of whom are high school graduates. The cancellations were caused by a fault in the database. We are working to resolve this problem," he said.
Central Java Deputy Governor Rustriningsih said her province would recruit new civil servants to occupy 12,458 vacant posts at local government agencies. Of that number, 11,895 new civil servants would be posted at 35 municipal and regency administration offices, and the rest would go to provincial administration agencies, she said.
Meanwhile, in Banyumas regency, Central Java, 1,300 contractual teachers have not been paid for more than 10 months. "I don't know why this has happened. In 2008, the payments came without a hitch, every three months," Yustro, a contractual teacher at a private high school in Sokaraja district, told reporters Saturday.
Banyumas regency administration had originally agreed to pay them Rp 200,000 in monthly allowances.
Banyumas Education Office chief Purwadi said the delay in payments was the result of a budget deficit.
