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Civil servants wary of ‘compulsory’ move to IKN
“This is too hasty. If [the government] is serious about it, it should’ve been carefully planned since the incumbent [president]’s first term,” said one civil servant.
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A computer rendition shows a plan for the new capital city, Nusantara, to be built in East Kalimantan. (Courtesy of/Public Works and Public Housing Ministry)
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rguably the most aspiring of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s many ambitious goals is his plan to build a new capital city in Kalimantan in a relatively brief time frame and have some 11,000 civil servants move there next year.
Some of the officials who would be required to leave Jakarta are wary of the arrangement, in which they do not have much say even though it would completely change their lives.
“As an Indonesian citizen and a civil servant, I support this plan. But it’s a shame that the discussion always revolves around [the jargon of] ‘duty’ and ‘compulsory relocation’ and no one ever talks about the rights of the employees getting relocated,” a civil servant at the Home Ministry, who will be called Jodhie for this article, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
A letter issued by the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry in December details which working units of which ministries and institutions are to be moved to the Nusantara Capital City (IKN) in 2024, and Jodhie’s department is penciled in as first in line.
Jodhie said there had been no talk about increasing workers’ take home pay, adding that living in Kalimantan was “even more expensive” than living in Jakarta.
“This is too hasty. If [the government] is serious about it, it should’ve been carefully planned since the incumbent [president]’s first term,” said Jodhie.
Gaffar, a 24-year-old civil servant with a ministry, concurred, telling the Post on Tuesday that the plan was “too hasty” and placed many young civil servants in a dilemma.
