Menaker: Indonesia Perlu Menambah 3,8 Juta Tenaga Kerja Terampil Per Tahun
Menaker: Indonesia Perlu Menambah 3,8 Juta Tenaga Kerja Terampil Per Tahun
In the coming years, technology development will replace manual labour whilst also generate new jobs. To address this issue, government, industry, and higher learning institutions are demanded to prepare future manpower, especially towards the predicted golden era of Indonesia’s economy.
“In 2030 Indonesia is predicted to be the seventh biggest economy in the world, on condition that we have skilled workers as many as 113 millions. Currently, we only have 56 millions, so we need to add up to 57 million until year 2030 or around 3.8 million per year,” said Manpower Minister, M. Hanif Dhakiri, giving a lecture at UGM Graduate School on Wednesday (13/9).
In this lecture Minister Hanif described the challenges facing Indonesian manpower as well as to meet the manpower sovereignty need. The issues are important to raise to shift the dependence on natural resource to human resource.
“It’s time we transform ourselves from depending on natural resource to human resource. Environmentally speaking, there is much of the natural resources that has degraded and not sustainable, hence we have to move towards human resource instead,” he said.
Minister Hanif said there are two problems in Indonesia currently, which are mismatch and underqualified worker, or those who work not based on their expertise or those who have qualifications under the required terms. There is also the problem of working poor due to the underqualifications of the workers. Most of workers in Indonesia only have low level of education. Amidst this condition, he said the step to take to increase the manpower quality is through vocational education whether in schools or training.
“With this profile, we need to make a breakthrough by vocational education. Vocational training education has to be one of national priorities so that the manpower absorption is increasing,” said the Minister.
He emphasised that the vocational education needs to pay attention to quality and access to people across Indonesia, not just in certain cities. He further explained the four forms of education to offer, which are work training by government, career development centres by companies, work training by companies, and apprenticeship by government appointed instructors.These hopefully will give time for the country to create new manpower that are qualified to meet national demands.
“I believe that Indonesia has big potential if the government, industry and educational institutions work together. There are many things to do, but we need to be always optimistic for a better future,” the Minister concluded.