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Thousands of new recruits decline civil service posts
The BKN head has reassured the House that the mass withdrawal will not affect the delivery of public services, as 16,000 new recruits had accepted their civil service posts, including in far-flung regions.
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New recruits take their civil service oath on March 22, 2024, during an induction ceremony at Bogor City Hall in Bogor, West Java. (Antara/Arif Firmansyah)
D
espite passing the civil service’s rigorous selection process, nearly 2,000 successful recruits have declined their new posts, citing placement mismatches and low salaries among the reasons for their withdrawal.
National Civil Service Agency (BKN) head Zudan Arif Fakrulloh has attributed the mass withdrawal to the government’s "optimization" policy, which allows for the automatic reassignment of candidates who did not qualify for their preferred roles to other vacant posts, often in a different region.
“This policy was created to ensure that all available civil servant [placements] across the country are filled,” Zudan told a meeting on Wednesday with the House of Representatives, as quoted by Kompas.com.
For example, he continued, multiple applicants might apply for a position as a sociology lecturer at a university that had only one slot, so the candidates who did not get the post would be placed in a similar role at other universities.
But this optimized reassignment scheme has led to dissatisfaction among some candidates, particularly those who were posted to regions far from their current domicile.
“The placement mismatch was the main reason many candidates decided not to proceed with their appointments,” Zudan said, underlining that recruits who declined their appointments would not be given any sanctions.
According to BKN data, 32 percent of the 1,967 new recruits who had withdrawn, or around 630 individuals, had applied to positions at the Higher Education, Science and Technology Ministry, followed by the Health Ministry (29 percent) and the Communications and Digital Ministry (8 percent).
