VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Pre-employment Card Program Needs Improvement to Continue in 2021 - editorial 

Indonesian government launched the pre-employment card program on April 11 2020. This is a program for working competency and entrepreneurship development aimed for job-seekers or anyone needing competence improvement, including micro and small business people. All Indonesian citizens at least 18 years old and not undergoing formal education can register for the pre-employment card.

According to the early concept initiated by President Joko Widodo, the pre-employment card is an effort to increase working competency, productivity, and competitiveness of Indonesian manpower. This program aims to realize the vision of top human resources which is the priority of Joko Widodo's second tenure. However, the Covid-19 pandemic expanded the pre-employment card function, namely as social security during the pandemic. Every pre-employment card owner receives aid worth around 3,5 million rupiahs consisting of scholarship for training and incentive that are given for four months.

In the ecosystem of pre-employment card programs, currently there are 7 digital platforms and 165 training agencies providing more than 2,000 types of training. Until now, there are seven favorite training categories namely sales and marketing, foreign language (english, korean, mandarin, japanese, and arabic), IT, office, food and beverage, lifestyle, and finance.

Since launching on April 11 2020, many people have been enthusiastic about the program. According to data from the Coordinating Ministry for Economy, the registration for pre-employment cards on prakerja.go.id until September 4 2020 had reached 15.9 million registrants. In 6 registration periods, three million people from 34 provinces of Indonesia were granted the pre-employment card. Some 849 thousand had finished their first training and 610 thousand had received incentive.

Considering the positive result from the pre-employment card, Indonesian government has decided to continue this program in 2021. If continued, the government will need to improve the learning module and expand the pre-employment card recipient. The module improvement aims to guarantee the training quality. The training contents of the pre-employment card program must be more practical to fulfill the participants' need in seeking a new job or a capital to begin a new business amid Covid-19 pandemic.