Indonesia plans to lay off a million civil servants

Bernama Malaysia — The Indonesian Government is planning to lay off a million civil servants in an effort to rationalise the manpower needed to run the country.

The local press today quoted the Minister of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform, Yuddy Chrisnandi, as saying that with the retrenchment exercise, the government aimed to have a total of 3.5 million civil servants by 2019. Indonesia currently has 4.517 million civil servants employed by the central and local governments. The reduction will be done in stages.

“The ratio of civil servants (to population) is still high at 1.7%. Therefore, in the next few years we will reduce it to 1.5%, or more than one million civil servants will be let go,” Yuddy said. He said that in 2019, there will be 520,000 civil servants who would be retiring, and the government would only hire to fill half of those vacancies, and they would be selected from among the best performing candidates.

Yuddy said besides that, the competency level of civil servants would also be increased with the recruitment of more individuals with Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees. He said that by having highly qualified civil servants, the government believed that they would be able to provide greater competitiveness.

He also advised civil servants to improve their performance if they did not want to be in the group of the million civil servants who would be laid off. Yuddy said civil servants who performed well need not worry, as the government would only lay off those who performed below par or were problematic. He added that those who were laid off would be given appropriate compensation in accordance with the law, and based on their qualifications.