In a new free market era
called the ASEAN Economic Community to be effective on January 1, 2016 traffic
of people, goods, services and investment would be free in Southeast Asia. The
question is: is MEA blessing or disaster ? This was related to readiness of
Indonesia’s human resources to compete against workers of other ASEAN states.
Indonesia with 240 million people is a huge market, constituting 40% of Asean population.
To Indonesian business people, chances to grab market opportunities from the
60% market outside Indonesia was great. But again the question was: how strong
was the local industry to compete against industries of the neighboring
countries ? Would Indonesia have the strengthen to grab southeast Asian market,
or would things turn otherwise?
It must not happen that the vast Indonesian market would
serve as sitting ducks for marketers of other countries. Over the past 10
years, the condition had been far from being impressive. Over that period,
de-industrialization had been prevalent. Many factories were closed due to
heavy import. The textile industry was heavily invaded, thousands of textile
producers collapsed. For example, the Tanah Abang Market in Jakarta, which was
the largest textile market in Southeast Asia, 80% of the products were imported
products.
The same was with forwear industry. The shoe industry
center in Cibaduyut Bandung had changed into a market of imported shoes.
Although there were still some shoemakers who still persisted, the condition
was most disheartening. Many other industries like cosmetics, jamu, infant food
and electronics which were also losing steam.
The intra ASEAN free trade agreement put the local
industry in a difficult position, they were losing their maneuverability.
Indonesia would become a paradise of imported goods. The nation’s trading
balance would be in deficit. The Government’s commitment to support local
industry was under question.
Supposedly one of the national problems was to make
competent personnel of high competitiveness those who were ready to work in
industries. The matter would be complicated if MEA were effective in 2016. Even
if it was said that Indonesian workers were not less competent than their
competitors, they still lack of self confidence in competing.
Although by quality Indonesian workers were not inferior,
their readiness to perform at regional level was still handicapped. The
handicap was in terms of mental attitude and mindset, known as softskill. One
of the thinkable solution was how stakeholders in education could develop
softskill for Indonesian workers. Psychological instead of physical readiness
was more needed by the industry, although many companies still set hard skill
set hard skill as qualification at initial screening,
A sound example was that nearly all employment ads set
certain Accumulative Achievement Index [IPK] as qualification requirement.
Universities were racing to make competent personnel, among others high IPK
qualification. The gap between schools and companies made Indonesia’s human
resources less competitive internationally.
Deviation from the right principles must be stopped by
conducting dialogue between the industrial and educational world. Some colleges
were already doing that, still many schools pursuing to make skilled graduates.
And yet workers of high integrity were those having high working ethos needed
by the industry. Dialogue between schools and companies was just one of the
alternative solutions.
Other thinkable solution was integrated curriculum from
kindergarten to High School with more emphasis on soft skill. Development of
soft skill was a long process of character building. Japan had been successful
in building strong national economy thanks to the support of high quality human
resources on account of their Government’s effort to make superior race of
strong softskill since early age.
Education at tertiary schools which only took 4 to 5
years was felt as too short to make competent, soft-skilled personnel. The
mission was in the domain of the Government, in this case the Ministry of
Education and Culture.
To reform curriculum with emphasis on soft skill rather
than hard skill was a hard challenge for the Government in view of the system
applied at the elementary schools today. Today with reasoning to step up
quality of education, many schools set high standard for their students.
Only trouble was there was too much focus on hard skill
in the system instead of softskill. A clear example was education at
kindergartens where children were stuffed with reading, writing and arithmetics
lessons as prerequirement to enter elementary school. This was indeed not the
right thing to do because children would miss their innocent and playful
childhood whereby by playing they could acquire softskill the easier way.
Soft skill qualities such as discipline, honesty, and responsibility
must be implemented instead of reading, writing and arithmetics. This was the
area where the Government of Japan had been successful which was why softskills
of their workers were above that of other nations.
Nation and character building in Indonesia must be
enhanced. This nation had tremendous human potentials which would prove to be
productive if they were armed with the right education. If this was realized,
the myth that foreigners or overseas graduates were better would vanish. At least
the best sons of the nation would have greater confidence to compete
internationally.
Sin economic and trading liberalization, very frequently
the Government of RI adopted policies which were paradoxical; so it came as no
surprise that the execution afield were often discouraging in the effort to
build competitiveness. Indonesia was aggressive in making market
liberalization, only to be shocked to realize that the nation was not fully
ready to compete.
In the banking industry, for example, it was easy to find
foreign bank’s branch offices in the cities or even towns; but try to find a representative
office of an Indonesian bank which could penetrate other countries: there was
bound to be none. The Ministry of Industry MS Hidayat admitted he was anxious
and worried about facing MEA. To be exact, he felt that Indonesia was not ready
to join MEA. One of the causes was high logistics cost which was 16% of total
production cost.
Yet in other countries logistics cost was normally not
more than 4% - 10% of total cost. It was this high logistics cost that made
Indonesian products lose competition internationally. High production cost in
Indonesia was mainly on account of many factors like poor infra structure, mismanagement
etc but the most incurable was corruption, illegal collection, collusion being
tolerated or untouched.
Above all, human resources development was a crucial
thing and of high urgency. There was still time for the Government and all
stakeholders to prepare qualified and competence professionals to face MEA by
January 1, 2016 next. This nation must not lose confidence, discouraged or feel
inferior. To be determined was one of the main prerequisite in entering
regional competition. It was better than being forlorn and be lost in self
pity, regretting why this nation was not ready to enter MEA 2015. (SS)
Business News - February 12, 2014
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