T

he government has given the go-ahead for all government institutions to once again begin hiring staff this year, following the lifting of the ban on the recruitment of civil servants.

Vice President Boediono however warned that the recruitment should be conducted based on the demands of each individual institution.

“The moratorium, which has been effective for 16 months, was officially lifted on Dec. 31, 2012. The policy has been very important in reorganizing the civil service recruitment process as part of the reform of the bureaucracy,” Boediono said.

Boediono said that the decision to lift the ban was made based on a projection of the demand for new civil servants up to 2016 prepared by the Administrative Reforms Ministry.

Boediono also called on government institutions to be transparent in their hiring and promotion of new civil servants.

Several institutions have implemented the open recruitment system including the Finance Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the Administrative Reforms Ministry, the State Administration Institute (LAN), the Government Procurement Regulatory Body (LKPP) and the Civil Service Agency (BKN).

Boediono also said only government institutions that had comprehensive five-year recruitment plans that would promote transparency and accountability could begin recruiting.

Only government institutions which managed to spend less than 50 percent of their budgets on staff salaries could start hiring, he said.

The final decision on whether government agencies could start the hiring process however will be made by Boediono in his capacity as chairman of the advisory council of the government-sanctioned National Bureaucracy Reform Committee.

Uchok Sky Khadafi, a researcher with the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (FITRA), criticized the government’s decision to end the moratorium.

“The government looks confused in its decisions. Initially they decided to suspend civil service recruitment on the basis that it could save money from the state budget but later it they realized that the moratorium could contribute to the rise in the rate of unemployment,” he said.

Uchok said that the moratorium should have been upheld as the real sector of the economy continued to thrive.

“With the moratorium being lifted, the amount of money from the state budget being wasted to pay the increasing number of civil servants will continue to rise,” he said.

The moratorium on hiring new civil servants was implemented in September 2011, following criticism from bureaucracy watchdogs that an ever greater proportion of state budgets was being spent on paying the salaries of government workers.

Three ministers issued a joint decree to officiate the moratorium; Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi and then Administrative Reforms Minister Azwar Abubakar.

Observers have also urged that the moratorium should be kept in place considering the fact that a large number of civil servants are currently under-employed.

Administrative Reforms Minister Azwar Abubakar had earlier said that nearly 95 percent of the 4.7 million civil servants in Indonesia were incompetent.

“Because they are incompetent in doing their jobs, most civil servants show no initiative in carrying out their tasks. Mostly they just follow orders,” Azwar said.

Azwar said that there were problems in recruiting quality employees although annually the government opens more than 100,000 vacancies compared to three million people entering the workforce.

By the end of last year, the government employed 4,462,982 civil servants nationwide, more than 1.9 percent of the Indonesian population of nearly 241 million.