Their frustration surfaced early this week after Administrative and Bureaucratic Reforms Minister Rini Widyantini announced that 1.2 million newly recruited civil servants and government contract employees would begin their jobs in October 2025 and March 2026, respectively.

The announcement came after many, if not most, of the new recruits had resigned from their previous jobs, expecting to start in their new roles this year in February-March for civil servants or March-July for contract workers.

Facing a possible loss of income over several months and up to a year, especially during the peak Ramadan-Idul Fitri holiday season, their anger spilled over into street protests in Jakarta and other cities as they demanded the government to revoke the postponement of their start dates.

It is understandable that the new government workers have vented their frustrations on the streets, since any delay to starting their jobs – arguably the country’s first such large-scale postponement in recent history – will put them in a position of financial vulnerability. It is hard to imagine how they will meet their families’ basic needs, including food, without an income at a time when commodity prices are inching up.

The government should also recognize that its decision to delay their start dates could also hurt the state coffers, which is already suffering from declining tax revenue and other factors.

A contemporary analysis estimates that financial losses from 250,000 noncompliant taxpayers over several months might reach Rp 6 trillion (US$364 million), an amount sufficient to renovate 3,000 schools nationwide.

The planned delay would also lead to trillions of rupiah in losses for the private sector as a result of reduced purchasing power among the new recruits, since they won’t be getting paychecks for six to 12 months.

The domino effect will not stop there, and economists have forecast that more layoffs will happen in other sectors because of lack of spending by government institutions and employees due to the postponement.

The decision could also affect public services, since several institutions are already burdened by a high workload due to a shortage of manpower.

For example, the Puskesmas (community health center) in Wajok Hulu village, Mempawah regency, West Kalimantan, has needed more health workers for months. Two midwives who passed last year’s civil service recruitment will now be unable to join the Puskesmas for who knows how long, leaving the center’s existing 10 health workers continuing to scramble to serve more than 26,000 people.

The government must take responsibility for this potential spiraling chain of chaos by immediately coming up with real solutions, not the temporary fixes recently offered by various officials.

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, the head of the National Civil Service Agency (BKN), has even suggested the new recruits could look for freelance or part-time gigs while waiting to start their new government jobs. He has also said the government might ask their previous employers to rehire them until their new start dates either this October or next March.

His suggestions met with immediate protests from the public, who demanded authorities to stop spouting ridiculous ideas and instead work hard to come up with a viable, practical solution.

With the ball back in her court, reforms minister Rini said she had reported the matter to the President, who said he would soon issue an instruction to resolve it.

This imminent presidential instruction must contain a real solution that is applicable for every one of the government’s 1.2 million new full-time and contract employees. There is no other fair solution.

Otherwise, the Prabowo administration risks losing a huge number of competent, capable individuals who want to serve our country by keeping the government running well, never mind the erosion of public trust as a result of its myopic policy flip-flops.