New recruits take their civil service oath on March 22, 2024, during an induction ceremony at Bogor City Hall in Bogor, West Java. - Photo: Antara file
JAKARTA: Despite 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 "optimisation" 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 (April 23) 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 optimised 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According to BKN data, 32 percent of the 1,967 new recruits who had withdrawn, or around 630 individuals, had applied to positions at the Higher Education, Science and Technology Ministry, followed by the Health Ministry (29 percent) and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).
Aside from placement mismatches, other key factors behind the mass withdrawal were personal and socioeconomic reasons, such as lack of family approval, a need to care for elderly or ill parents, further education plans and concerns about relatively low wages for civil servants.
However, BKN head Zudan highlighted that around 16,000 new recruits had accepted the civil service appointments in areas outside their preferred regions.
“Those who accepted the alternative placements can apply for a transfer after completing five years of service in their assigned location,” he added.
According to Administrative and Bureaucratic Reforms Minister Rini Widyantini, the withdrawal of almost 2,000 civil service recruits will not adversely impact public services.
“Around 16,000 recruits accepted their alternative placements. If they hadn’t, the unfilled positions could have significantly affected the consistency and quality of public services across the country,” she said recently, as quoted by Kompas.id.
More than 3 million potential candidates joined the latest civil servant recruitment drive in late 2024 for a chance to fill more than 250,000 vacancies nationwide.
What should have been a celebratory occasion for new recruits turned into a mass protest during Ramadan last month after minister Rini announced a postponement of their start date to October, instead of in February or March as initially planned.
According to Rini, the reasons for the delay were to have a streamlined, simultaneous start date for new civil servants and to give the BKN the time it needed to formulate standardised placement procedures, including for future recruitment drives.
The new recruits hit back at the government, saying the postponement meant months of lost income and financial setbacks, especially as many individuals had resigned from their previous jobs by the time of Rini’s announcement.
In response to the backlash, State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi said the government would move the start date to June. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
