Unease After Budget Cuts

2 hours ago 1

April 28, 2026 | 04:26 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Yani, a teacher at State Senior High School Kokbaun in South Central Timor, East Nusa Tenggara, has grown anxious after hearing about plans to reduce the number of contract-based government employees (PPPK). As a non-civil servant teacher, she fears losing her job, her sole source of income. She also worries about the policy's impact on her students. "Education is a basic service. If teachers are sent home, the impact will be enormous," she told Tempo on Tuesday, April 21, 2026.

The unease is shared by Nikodemus Eksol Nura, a teacher at State Vocational High School 1 Wewewa Timur in Southwest Sumba. Nikodemus fears that the East Nusa Tenggara administration's plan to furlough thousands of PPPK workers next year will disrupt the teaching and learning process. "Our school has only two math teachers, and both are PPPK. If we are laid off, who will teach?" he said.

The teachers' anxiety stems from a statement by East Nusa Tenggara Governor Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena in March, who said that 9,000 PPPK employees could be furloughed by 2027. The situation is driven by the implementation of Law No. 1/2022 on Fiscal Relations between the Central and Regional Governments, which caps personnel spending at 30 percent of regional budgets starting January 1, 2027.

Melkiades said personnel spending in the province far exceeds that threshold. Personnel expenditure at the provincial level reaches 40.29 percent of the regional budget, while the average across regencies and cities stands at 54.30 percent. "We have to cut personnel spending drastically from around Rp2.14 trillion (about US$126 million) to Rp1.59 trillion (US$93.5 million). If fully enforced, around 9,000 PPPK workers cannot be paid," Melki, as Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena is known, told Tempo last week.

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