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Govt's Gini ratio target too ambitious: NGOs
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Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution (left) speaks with Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung (right) before presenting the results of meeting on poverty alleviation and economic inequality on March 16 in Jakarta. (ANTARA FOTO/Yudhi Mahatma)
T
he government’s aim of reducing the national inequality ratio, known as the Gini ratio, from 0.41 to 0.39 in 2016 is too ambitious according to one activist, who points out that Brazil took 15 years to reduce its Gini ratio from 0.59 to 0.54.
International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) program manager Siti Khoirun Ni'mah said the main problem with inequality in Indonesia was the high number of people with a limited education.
"Limited access to jobs in the labor market is one cause of inequality, especially for a labor force with low education levels, such as those who did not graduate from high school," she said at a press conference on Wednesday in Jakarta.
The government, she urged, should "lend a helping hand" and facilitate job access by obliging companies and institutions to organize job training for applicants who didn't finish high school.
The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded unemployment in Indonesia at 5.9 percent in 2015; 7.45 million people out of a labor force of 128 million. Forty-five percent of those unemployed did not finish high school.
At the same time, Indonesia is currently entering the ASEAN economic community. According to Siti, Indonesian workers must be prepared to compete with workers from neighboring countries.
She urged the government to proactively facilitate job access, calling on the Education Ministry and Finance Ministry to allocate more funding to job training for the less educated. She suggested a further allocation of Rp 20 trillion (US$1.5 billion) to Rp 30 trillion, or roughly another 20 percent of the total education budget.
"The government needs to make a rule that obliges private companies, state firms, ministries and agencies to organize job training. The Finance Ministry should also set up scholarships through the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) for high school graduates," Siti said.
The Education Ministry, she suggested, should also identify industries with an employment gap, resulting from shortages in either skills or qualifications, and seek to prepare workers for those jobs.
An analyst at Migrant Care Wahyu Susilo said job training in Indonesia for migrants was very exploitative, requiring migrant workers to pay up to XXX US$16 million XXX for their training, when the quality of the training provided was generally inadequate.
"We encourage the provision of quality training for migrant workers, funded by the state budget and other resources owned by the state, to end the burden placed on migrant workers," he said. (ags)
