"At the commemoration of National Teacher's Day (HGN) 2022, the fate of teachers, especially honorary teachers, has not improved," P2G national coordinator Satriwan Salim said here on Friday.
"The selection of PPPK teachers, which was originally expected to be a solution to the lack of teacher welfare, turned out to be even more chaotic," he added.
He said that the promise made by the minister of education, culture, research, and technology as well as the minister for administrative and bureaucratic reform to appoint 1 million honorary teachers as PPPK teachers has not materialized.
In 2021, only 293 thousand contract-based teachers were recruited. Meanwhile, Indonesia still needs 1 million PPPK teachers.
"The commemoration of National Teacher's Day must be used as the right momentum for the central government and regional governments to evaluate all their policies regarding teachers," Salim said.
P2G is of the view that the welfare of teachers, especially honorary teachers, is currently still not guaranteed, even though the state owes a large debt to the services of honorary teachers, who number more than 1 million.
"They are still paid far below the regional minimum wage. They are only given an average wage of Rp500 thousand–Rp1 million per month," he said.
"Based on Law Number 14 of 2005 concerning Teachers and Lecturers, Article 14, teachers should have the right to earn an income above the minimum necessities of life and guarantee (of) social welfare," he added.
Indonesia is currently experiencing an emergency shortage of state civil apparatus (ASN) teachers in public schools. The process and continuation of learning in schools has so far been heavily supported by honorary teachers.
"Until 2024, Indonesia needs 1.3 million ASN teachers in public schools. In 2021 alone, we needed 1,002,616 ASN PPPK teachers nationally. Unfortunately, only 293,860 teachers have graduated and received formation from the regional government," he pointed out.
"Even more regrettable is that the 193,954 teachers who passed their PPPK test did not get their formation until November 2022," he added.
Salim reiterated that the promise of the two ministers to appoint 1 million ASN PPPK teachers has not materialized.
"The fate of 193 thousand teachers is unclear due to the problematic selection of PPPK. Likewise the fate of private madrasa teachers who could not take part in the selection. This seems discriminatory," he said.
He further said that the three stages of PPPK teacher selection should have been completed in 2021. However, the third stage of selection has only been opened in November 2022.
Meanwhile, 193 thousand teachers who were not appointed under PPPK are perplexed. Some of them are no longer teaching because the foundation has fired them, he said.
According to the association, the P1, P2, P3, and general schemes in the 3rd phase of PPPK teacher selection have led to fresh injustices, with many of the 193 thousand teachers from the P1 category dropping to P2 and below.
"The formation of the 193 thousand teachers should have been opened and placed by the local government. So, the selection committee unraveled it one by one," he said.
"Don't even open up priorities 2 and 3, while the problems experienced by 193 thousand P1 have not been resolved," he added.
P2G expressed the hope that President Widodo will help resolve the problems related to teacher management in the country, including the issue of PPPK teacher selection and the management of PPPK.
"We hope the President can help resolve this problem before ending his term of office in 2024," said Salim.
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Translator: Indriani, Katriana
Editor: Sri Haryati
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