Issues: `Controversy continues over ministers' pay'

Sat, 11/07/2009 1:02 PM  |  Reader's Forum

The plan to increase ministers' salaries is insensitive towards the hardships that most Indonesians have to face in their daily life, legislators and experts say.

"Around 80 percent of the state budget is allocated to the elite. Increasing the ministers' salaries will only widen the gap between the elite and the common people," a political expert from the University of Indonesia, Arbi Sanit, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Previously, House of Representatives Speaker Marzuki Alie from the Democratic Party, said it was reasonable for ministers to have their salaries raised, regardless of the fact that they earned much more than the average worker.

"Ministers are responsible for the republic's well-being. We cannot place their salaries on the same level as the minimum regional wage *UMR*. Their salaries can not be in the same league as factory workers," he said at the House building in Senayan, Jakarta, on Tuesday.

Your comments:
Look at those numbers (the old ones) with ministers making 168+ million a month. At current rupiah rates that's more than US$200,000 a year, not including the holiday bonus. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, makes $186,600 a year. I'm not saying she is somehow more valuable than, say, the Minister for Youth and Sports Affairs but get real.

They already have higher salaries than ministers in most countries around the world and they will now get even more? And this in a country with a minimum wage under $100 a month. Also: Jim, forget this ridiculous idea everyone has that higher salaries end corruption. Especially when ministers are party appointments rather than qualified experts in their fields.

Me Me
Indonesia

This is ridiculous. Why are they trying to pay low salaries to the ministers, but pay such high salaries to parliamentarians? Ministers get Rp 19 million a month. A legislator gets Rp 60 million a month. But whenever the government wants to raise ministers' salaries, House members make such silly protests that it is "insensitive" to poor people. How about their own salaries then?

Leo Danuarta
Jakarta

I totally agree that it's insensitive. They're already earning at least Rp 168 million, which is way, way higher than the UMR. So, for Marzuki Alie to compare it with the UMR doesn't hold water any longer. Ministers should lead the way by reducing the income gap and holding the consumer price index steady.

They should promote the reduction in the income gap and recommend ways of doing that. For example, engineers in oil companies earn lots of money. What the oil companies can do is freeze their salaries and use the money to hire more engineers. Even though it will reduce the productivity of each engineer, it will help reduce the number of unemployed.

Second, it will help close the income gap. Third, it will slow down increases in the consumer price index. If the solution to price increases is to keep on raising salaries, prices will never stop going up and the poor will become poorer.

So, SBY, his ministers and elected legislators need to use their brains, at least this one time, and show the people that they meant what they were campaigning about.

Farid Tuan
Bontang, East Kalimantan

For such an important job, I think a good pay raise and a higher standard of living will improve the quality of people you get in government; they are less likely to need bribe money, and you will get better qualified people interested if the pay is good.

After all, you get what you pay for. Just make sure that with the better pay, you vote for a better performance from smarter and harder working people.

Jim S.
Jakarta

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