Autonomy Watch: Regency opts not to recruit new employees

Regency administrations need not always comply with central government policy as the regional autonomy era provides wider room for regions to determine their own future, despite instructions from Jakarta.

If regency administrations consider a policy troublesome, they have the potential to dismiss it, as did the Purbalingga, Central Java regency administration when it decided not to implement the civil servant recruitment policy this year.

The Purbalingga regency administration acknowledged that it lacked funds to recruit and pay the salaries of new civil servants both this year and next year.

That is why the regency, inhabited by 800,000 residents, decided to call off recruitment of civil servants, which should have been carried out by November in accordance with the central government’s instruction issued by the office of the State Minister for Administrative Reform.

Purbalingga deems it’s budget insufficient to pay the new civil servants’ payroll.

“We have agreed and decided alongside the regency legislature to cancel the civil servants’ recruitment program this year. We don’t know about next year, but we’ll see the conditions,” Purbalingga Vice Regent Sukento Ridho said.

“We have sent a letter to the Central Java Civil Service Agency which explains the postponement of the 2010 civil servants recruitment program due to limited funds,” he said.

Each year the central government issues a policy to increase the number of new civil servants in regency and mayoralty administrations in line with their respective needs.

“We have been recruiting new employees for the past five years, but we decided to postpone it this year because the regency administration is the one who has to pay their salaries,” Purbalingga regency spokesman Prayitno told The Jakarta Post Friday.

The recruitment of civil servants this year would obviously augment spending on employees and reduce the direct spending budget or the budget for infrastructure development, Prayitno said.

The postponement of civil servant recruitment was expected to save budget funds of around Rp 7.8 billion (US$875,000), Rp 7.2 billion of would have been designated for the new civil servants’ annual salaries and Rp 600 million for the recruitment process, he added.

Purbalingga regency council deputy speaker Adi Yuwono confirmed the joint agreement between the regency legislative and executive institutions. “The problem is we have run out of budget funds. This is a worrisome matter because apparently we still need new employees,” Adi said.

“Of the more than Rp 700 billion of Purbalingga’s 2011 budget, around Rp 500 billion is allocated for the civil servants’ payroll, while the rest is for development,” he said.

Thousands of jobseekers in Purbalingga have voiced their disappointment over the postponement of civil servant recruitment.