T

he unemployment rate in Indonesia remains high and continues to pose a serious problem to the country as it causes instability to the nation’s economy, politics and security, Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar has said.

Speaking at a job fair and unemployment-eradication event held at the Panca Budi University in Medan, North Sumatra, over the weekend, Muhaimin said there had been a decrease of 6.6 percent in the country’s unemployment rate for the last two years. Yet, the unemployment figure remained high at 7.7 million.

“This is a serious problem because the number of unemployed people and dismissed workers are higher than the number of available jobs,” he said.

This, he said, could trigger social unrest and hamper development in the long run. “That is why the government has pledged, by all possible means, to bring down unemployment to 5.1 percent by 2014.”

 To realize this, he added, strong commitment was needed in the form of serious, well planned, coordinated, integrated and sustainable efforts by all stakeholders, including government institutions, the private sector and communities.

Commitment is needed to develop the country’s human resources in order to have a workforce capable of competing and creating job opportunities. “Even more important is how to develop entrepreneurship among job seekers,” he said.

Separately, acting North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho said the open unemployment rate in the province was 6.7 percent in 2011, lower than the previous year’s figure of 8.01 percent.

 He praised the role of businesses and strategic industries in that success.

“The business world is very important in controlling the unemployment rate both for apprentices and for new recruitment,” Gatot said.

Meanwhile, Panca Budi University’s rector, M. Isa Indrawan, said that to deal with the high unemployment in the country, cooperation was needed among various parties, especially between the government and the business world. It was for this reason, he said, that his university had organized a moral movement to deal with unemployment.

“Unemployment in the country is our shared problem. All elements in the community, including the government and private businesses, must involve themselves in tackling it,” Isa said.