Arientha Primanita – The home affairs minister urged regional administrations on Wednesday to tighten their purse strings and reduce the number of contract workers in their ranks.

Speaking at the State Palace, Gamawan Fauzi said the practice of hiring contract workers to fill minor government positions, such as teachers, village leaders and nurses, was putting a strain on the state's finances.

"Contract workers only pose a burden to the regional budgets," he said. "There are still regions hiring contract workers while we stopped the program in 2006." Gamawan said he had sent out a reminder to regional heads to stop hiring contract workers.

Most of the contract workers, who receive low salaries and lack the benefits enjoyed by civil servants, have in the past few years pushed the government to improve their status to full-time employees. Some have worked for decades on renewed short-term contracts.

Gamawan said an average of 39 percent of regional budgets were being spent on salaries and officials' expenditures, while capital expenditure only accounted for 20 percent. "This means that the regional budgets have not been used optimally for the interests of the public," he said.

Bambang Shergi Laksmono, dean of the Social and Political Sciences Faculty at the University of Indonesia, said the government needed to conduct a nationwide survey of civil servant deployment. "There must be a mapping of the numbers, posts and qualifications of all the civil servants in the country," he said.

Bambang said the problem with the government workforce was that workloads were often uneven and many did not have the proper qualifications to do their jobs. "There must be better selection and proper placement of the employees so that it does not cause problems in the government's performance."

Gamawan said that compared to other countries in the region, the ratio between civil servants and population served was still low, at around 2.4 to 100.

Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, meanwhile, said the number of civil servants was too high and a burden on the state budget with the outlays on salaries, pensions and insurance.

"Regarding civil servants, we have to be cautious because the number is already high enough and we are hoping there is a program to reform the bureaucracy to increase our civil servants' productivity," he told private broadcaster SCTV.

The minister said that many of the routine budget allocations for provincial administrations were spent on salaries, even though their budgets were limited and, consequently, did not leave enough funds for completing infrastructure projects.

"There is a region where 70 percent of the budget is used just to pay civil servants' salaries," he said without giving further details.

"If we are not careful, the cost of civil servants, which is not only related to salaries, will also affect other institutions such as Taspen [the state-owned pension fund] and Askes [the state health insurance company] because of a poorly planned increase in the number of civil servants," he said.

He also advised the Home Affairs Ministry to improve the selection processes for hiring civil servants.