Working in Indonesia; Between Indonesia Employees and Expatriates

Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago country consists of 13.466 islands. Indonesia is the fourth-largest populated country and the largest Muslim populated country in the world, about 230 million although officially not Islamic countries.

Indonesia is known for its natural resources wealth, that’s why Indonesia colonized by Netherlands for 350 years and Japan for 3.5 years a view years ago. This made Indonesia people grew to be 'inferiority' people. Although it's been more than 60 years got the independence, but the syndrome of ‘colonized mental’ still attached. Indonesia people feel themselves not aligned with other people from other nations.

The simple example could be seen from the differentiation of salary rate which very larger between expatriates and Indonesia employees. The expatriates paid 10 times bigger than Indonesia employee though with the same level of education, ability, responsibility and performance.

According to the standards of the Bappenas, a foreign engineer in Jakarta, get salary around more than US $ 5000.00 per month. Otherwise with the same qualification with Indonesia employee received only $ 500.00. It’s very common in a project, though with higher education qualifications such as MSc or PHd, Indonesia remain paid lower than expatriate who just BSc. In addition expatriates also get facilities such as a luxury house or apartment, car, sports club, education fee for their children and other facilities.

Actually it does not matter if the expatriate paid in such a high salary if they have an unique ability that is not owned by the Indonesia employee and absolutely necessary. But if with the same capabilities and performance, and then paid higher just because of his foreigners status then it will be not logical.

Therefore, it is necessary to change the paradigm that considers the expatriate (the ‘white skin’ people) is better than Indonesia employee. The Government should also immediately do ‘HUMAN RESOURCES’ mapping owned by Indonesia employee, both with regard to quantity and quality. With all the statistics and maps which clear about the spread of Indonesia in various HR disciplines, it will get a clear picture about the strength of Indonesia Human Resources.

To be continued in Part II, Indonesia in ASEAN Economic Community atau Masyarakat Ekonomi ASEAN (MEA)