More sackings in Jakarta civil service

Jakarta Governor Basuki Purnama Tjahaja intends to dismiss most of his Parks and Cemetery Agency, after the team failed to meet deadlines.

“If I only dismiss the head of the agency, Ratna Diah Kurniati, it might not be effective. Most employees in the agency, including Ratna’s subordinates, should also be dismissed,” the Governor said.

The agency, employing 35 staff, failed to meet its May deadline to purchase a piece of land in central Jakarta. The local government plans to convert the area into a public space for residents to stage rallies.

The Governor suspects that the agency has tie-ins with the local mafia, which is slowing the acquisition to profit from the delay, according to the Jakarta Post.

Governor Ahok has a long history of removing officials who he feels are underperforming. He cut the civil service from 8,000 to 4,000 in his first two months in office.

“By 2 January 2015, we actually cut 50% of government officials in structural posts”, he told GovInsider. When he first took office in 2014, he believed that the government was slow and corrupt.

Speaking in an interview with GovInsider earlier this year, he explained his policy. “If they are too rich, too corrupt and too lazy – we just fire them,” he said “If you are not good, we fire you as a bureaucrat. But if you want to work hard, you [can] keep going”.

The governor uses a mobile app to track the performance of all of his 267 subdistrict heads - he promotes those who are capable and fires underperformers if they cannot explain their poor performance. Image from the Governor Ahok's facebook page