How Indonesia’s government's workforce training programme reaches those who need it most

Entering its fifth year, Indonesia’s Prakerja seeks to remain an inclusive government programme that is open to anyone who wants to develop their professional skills to achieve a better life.

Prakerja aims to improve workforce productivity through skilling, upskilling, and reskilling. During the pandemic, the programme provided training and cash incentives, with greater priority given to workers who have been laid off.

"Prakerja will remain focused on how to help the workforce prepare themselves for work challenges, improve their skills, and encourage them to move up to a better economic level," said Executive Director of the Project Management Office (PMO) of Kartu Prakerja, Denni Purbasari, in her welcoming speech at the Five Years of Prakerja Initiative event: Celebrating Prakerja, Celebrating #JadiBisa, on October 3 in Jakarta.  

According to Denni, Prakerja provides a fair quota for each geographical area and aims to encourage more involvement of underserved groups such as women and people with disabilities.

“We cannot talk about a programme being inclusive without the participation of vulnerable groups," said Denni, citing internal data that 52 per cent of programme participants are women and 3 per cent are people with disabilities.  

For almost five years, Prakerja has provided more than 6,000 training modules ranging from digital skills, green skills, foreign languages, hospitality, engineering and various other skills to 18.9 million participants from across Indonesia.   

In an interview, Denni shared with GovInsider the steps that her organisation has taken to maintain the inclusivity of the government programme.

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Focus on low skilled workers  

Denni explained that Prakerja does not focus too much on cutting edge technology training that can only be enjoyed by the workforce who are at the top of the labour market pyramid, both in terms of economic ability and quality of higher education.   

Instead, Prakerja puts significant focus on on-the-ground training that is needed by most of the Indonesian labour force whose economic standing is not very strong, or those who did not have the opportunity to go to university.  

She recounted how the government's massive downstream mining policy has opened the potential for 18 million new jobs. Of the 18 million jobs, nine million of them are indirect workers such as administrative workers, field operators or security guards.,   

"Their jobs don't actually require too sophisticated techniques, but there should still be someone to train them," said Denni. She noted that basic skills courses such as Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, are among the highest in demand.   

Regarding the government's ambition to groom more artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners in the future, Denni said the government was considering a cost sharing model from participants or corporations, such as through a paid certification scheme.  

"AI training costs tens of millions of rupiah. If it is fully paid for by the state, any economist would say that it is not wise."  

Prakerja has organised the latest digital courses such as AI, data science, or cloud computing to increase productivity and encourage innovation.  

Currently, there are 14 types of AI training, and 39 green skills training provided by Prakerja together with private training partners. 

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Equal opportunity to access training 

According to Denni, Prakerja applies a quota system per province rather than first come first serve so that the labour force across Indonesia has an equal opportunity to access training. Without a quota system, those with better internet access will get a bigger chance when registering. 

She further shared that management only gives opportunities to people who have never received Prakerja training through a strict verification process.  

In five years, Prakerja has developed into an integrated labour market ecosystem with a job vacancy information portal that can be sorted by province and qualification. This portal allows one to apply for courses as well as search for desired jobs. 

Digitalisation overcomes geographical challenges  

According to Denni, digitalisation has helped Prakerja overcome the geographical challenges in government training programmes, especially when it comes to increasing the participation of participants outside Java.  

She pointed out that within five years, the number of programme beneficiaries from Papua Province – Indonesia’s easternmost province – has reached 98,000 people, or 0.5 per cent of the national number of beneficiaries.  

"Prakerja is an end-to-end digital programme, starting from the registration process, verification, financing, training process, to the provision of certificates. Without digitalisation, it would take decades to reach that many participants.”  

However, Denni admits that not all training can be conducted online. There are some that must be conducted face-to-face, especially in the mining, agriculture and plantation sectors.    

Prakerja works closely with local governments to provide internet access in areas with limited connectivity. The PMO team and Prakerja alumni in various regions also provide assistance to participants, starting from the registration process to the course of training. 

This article was originally published in Bahasa Indonesia