Indonesia to start relocating civil servants to new capital next year

Jakarta, Oct 8 (IANS) Indonesia is gearing up to commence the relocation of civil servants to the country's future capital of Nusantara on the island of Kalimantan from January next year, a Minister said here on Tuesday.

The country's Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Abdullah Azwar Anas told local media that his Ministry is working to prepare incentives for those civil servants to be moved to Nusantara in January next year, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We will immediately prepare the scheme and their departures along with incentives and others," he said.

The government initially planned to conduct the relocation of more than 4,000 civil servants to Nusantara in September. The program was postponed due to reasons, including the incompleteness of some housing complexes.

Indonesia plans to move more than 30,000 civil servants from crowded Jakarta to Nusantara and the relocation process is to be conducted in three stages until 2029.

According to 2023 official data, the Central government employs around 900,000 civil servants and about 20,000 non-permanent workers, nearly 20 per cent of whom are based in Jakarta.

Azwar Anas said President Joko Widodo had ordered state civil servants (ASN) to move to the Nusantara Capital City (IKN) by January 2025.

"Last night I received an order from the President through Pratikno asking that ASN be relocated to IKN in January," Anas said at the Gebyar Pelayanan Prima event in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The relocation of ASN to IKN was supposed to take place in September 2024. However, until the beginning of October, the process had not started.

Anas said that President Widodo also asked that the ecosystem preparation be finalised, and that the Minister of Public Works and Housing (PUPR) said that everything was completed.

Last week, the Minister of National Development Planning and Head of Bappenas, Suharso Monoarfa said that the transfer of ASN to IKN was behind schedule. Therefore, he said, a rescheduling scenario for the transfer of ASN to IKN will be carried out starting this month or next month.

Speaking at the Vice Presidential Palace in central Jakarta on Friday (October 4), Suharso said that the priority of the IKN authority is to ensure that all facilities for ASN are met, such as hospitals, schools for their children, and other utilities and services.

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