A cleared forest area marks a 7.3-km toll road project underway near the new capital city of Nusantara in East Kalimantan, as seen in this undated handout photo from state-owned construction company PT Wijaya Karya, the project’s developer. - Antara
JAKARTA: The government plans to relocate a handful of cabinet members to Nusantara as early as July, followed by a bigger wave of relocation in September that will see almost 12,000 civil servants calling the country’s new capital in East Kalimantan home.
Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Abdullah Azwar Anas said the government had started laying down the regulatory groundwork for relocating civil servants to Nusantara over the next few months.
“Starting from July, a few ministers, including Basuki [Hadimuljono] will relocate to the new capital,” Abdullah told a press briefing last week, without elaborating which cabinet members would be joining the public works and housing minister in the new capital.
Abdullah said the government would then focus on temporarily housing for the over 1,000 officials who would be involved in the 79th Independence Day celebrations on Aug 17, long earmarked by President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo as the deadline for relocating government employees.
He said the occasion would “require a big support system, since thousands will be staying” in the nation’s new capital to attend the August celebrations.
“As such, we have received an instruction from the [presidential] palace for civil servants to be relocated after the ceremony,” Abdullah added.
Civil servants are to be relocated through a staggered process based on the division they work for at selected ministries or institutions, instead of entire ministries as initially planned.
Abdullah said the first wave in September would affect around 11,900 civil servants and certain high-ranking officials from 38 ministries and state institutions, rather than moving all employees of 10 ministries.
He added, however, that this figure could “still be adjusted based on the availability of housing and [the readiness] of infrastructure”.
Meanwhile, the second and third waves would involve relocating around 6,000 and 14,000 employees respectively, though he did not provide a time frame. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
