Gov’t will not Lay off Civil Servants, VP Says

Vice President Jusuf Kalla speaks to reporters on Friday (3/6)

The Government has no plan to lay off millions of civil servants as reported by the media recently, Vice President Jusuf Kalla announced on Friday.

According to Kalla, the Government will instead implement the ‘civil servant negative growth’ policy.

“We won’t abruptly discharge them. There will be no layoffs.Civil servants cannot be laid off. It is only a natural retirement so we will have a negative growth of civil servants,” Kalla said at the Vice Presidential Palace.

The policy to have a ‘negative growth’ ofcivil servants at ministries and non-ministry governmental institutions is implemented related to the moratoriumprogram on hiringcivil servants, Kalla said.

“We plan to implement the policy for eight years. If there are 100 civil servants who retire, we will only recruit 50 new workers,”Kalla said, adding that the 8-year moratorium is conductedwith the calculation that there is500,000 civil servantswho will retire until 2019.

“The moratorium will be in place until 2019.We will not hire new civil servants. So when there are 100 workers who retire, only 50 of them will be replaced because some can be done with technology,” Kalla said.

At a coordinating meeting on the plan to rationalize the number of civil servants, Kalla said that the process would begin gradually, starting from the training, the improvement of salary system, as well as making the roadmap of the policies that will be adopted.

“There are several regions whose budget to pay their civil servants reach more than 80 percent of the Regional Budget; thus they cannot carry out development. Consequently, funds for public services are reduced although the amount is not too big. Therefore, we have to make the roadmap for eight years,” Kalla concluded. (ANT/ES) (EP/YM/Naster)