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Luhut defends foreign worker suggestion
The senior minister has responded to criticisms about his suggestion to recruit foreign supervisors for the IKN project by highlighting the hypocrisy of his critics' assumption that local supervisors had the capacity to oversee such a grand development project.
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Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Panjaitan (center left, in white with mic) speaks to Singaporean businesspeople on May 31, 2023 during a visit to the site of Indonesia's new capital city, Nusantara. (The Jakarta Post/Indonesian Embassy to Singapore)
W
hen Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan last week insisted on the need for foreigners to supervise the Nusantara capital city (IKN) project, he prefaced his statement in a way that suggested he knew exactly how his fellow Indonesians would react.
Several politicians knocked on his recommendation with a touch of resource nationalism, to which he responded by saying it was insincere to assume that local foremen were capable of overseeing such a key strategic project.
“We can get so hypocritical sometimes. When I said that we should use bule-bule [white foreigners] to lead the IKN project, people responded with anger. They said, ‘Can’t we do it ourselves?' Of course we cannot,” he said during a business launch event at his Jakarta office on Monday.
Defending his decision, the senior minister explained that recruiting foreign supervisors was the only way to ensure the quality of IKN’s most important development projects. Not only would these projects help improve the IKN’s image among investors, they would allow local talents to gain from the transfer of knowledge that would entail.
He added that the suggestion was intended for President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
The government has pushed ahead with its Aug. 17, 2024 deadline for some of the most crucial infrastructure in the IKN project, including a new presidential palace, on hopes of celebrating Indonesia’s 79th Independence Day in Nusantara.
For many observers, the success of the IKN project is poised to become Jokowi’s crowning achievement after leading the country over two terms of development-heavy policies. It therefore came as hardly a surprise to many that the government would do whatever it took to guarantee smooth progress in developing the new capital.
