Jakarta. The government on Thursday promised faster promotion for civil servants willing to serve in remote areas to address the country's Java-centric public employee composition.

Many civil servants -- including doctors and teachers -- are going out of their way to avoid being assigned to Indonesia’s remote areas. This caused the civil servant distribution to be heavily concentrated in Java: the world's most populous island and the home to Southeast Asia's largest metropole Jakarta. And this will inevitably lead to inequitable development.

According to Bureaucratic Reforms Minister Abdullah Azwar Anas, the government is currently working on a civil service bill to attract more public servants into remote regions, among others.

This includes enabling civil servants in underdeveloped regions to climb the career ladder much faster.

“We are mulling granting civil servants who serve in the remote regions to have faster promotions compared to when they are in Java. It takes 4 years for a civil servant to get promoted in Java. But the waiting time will be just 2 years if they serve in the underdeveloped regions,” Azwar Anas said at the Investor Daily Round Table forum in Jakarta on Thursday evening.

“This will motivate the civil servants [into staying in the remote areas]. It is not just idealism that we need to think of. This is about their future,” Azwar Anas said.

Indonesia saw 170,000 vacant posts in its remote areas in 2021.

The minister revealed that some civil servants would try staying in the less developed regions for a year before lobbying for a relocation.

"It is tough to find a specialist or teacher in Papua and Maluku, among others. … They would apply as a doctor in Papua and stay there for about a year. They will then lobby hard for a reassignment to Java," Azwar Anas said.