The Omnibus Law Ciptaker is one of the Government’s breakthroughs in the field of regulation. The community also supports this policy because it is considered capable of absorbing the workforce in Indonesia.
The Covid-19 pandemic has swayed many sectors, the implementation of the PSBB policy seems to have decreased productivity, many factories cannot produce because of the difficulty of getting raw materials, this has also resulted in an increase in unemployment and the number of employees laid off.
In Bali Province, for example, the Head of the Bali Province Manpower and ESDM Office reported that as of June 9, 2020, 73,397 workers in the formal sector were laid off and 2,625 people were laid off.
July-August is the graduation period for students from various levels of education. This will automatically create a new working age population group that will enter the labor market share during this pandemic.
The number of forces in Bali alone has been estimated at 2,591,033 people and the non-workforce population is 770,669 people. This figure is confirmed by the chance that the demographic bonus is predicted to have occurred since entering 2015. The demographic bonus is roughly defined as the ratio of the population of productive age which is relatively larger than the population of non-productive age.
Previously, Minister of National Development Planning (PPN) Suharso Monoarfa explained that the open unemployment rate is projected to increase to 4 million to 5.5 million in 2020 due to the impact of the corona virus pandemic.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance also predicts that the number of unemployed people will increase in the range of 4.03 million to 5.2 million people in 2020.
The increase in the estimated number of unemployed is the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Bappenas once explained that the sectors that would lose a lot of workers were trade, manufacturing, construction, services and accommodation.
Even startup companies in Indonesia have also been forced to lay off their employees, it is noted that startup companies like Jojek have laid off 430 employees, and Grab has laid off 360 people.
In addition, several startups have also been forced to close their operations. Like Airy, a startup that provides low-cost hotels services which announced that they would close all their operations starting last May 31. This policy was taken by management after considering many things including pandemic conditions.
This is certainly a serious blow to the economy and labor sector in Indonesia. So it is necessary to have a regulatory breakthrough so that the economic sector can improve.
Ace Hasan Syadzily as Deputy Chairperson of Commission VIII DPR RI assessed that the steps of the government and the DPR to discuss and finalize the Work Creation Omnibus Law Bill got the right momentum during Covid-19.
The Work Creation Omnibus Law Bill which focuses on creating jobs and a workforce that is ready to compete, according to ACE is also a long term for the big design of the Indonesian economy.
The facts currently faced are that Indonesia is still experiencing bottlenecking from an economic aspect. The issues of overlapping licensing, convoluted bureaucracy, ease of business that still need to be improved, to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) that need to be even bigger are all in the structure of the Job Creation Bill.
Meanwhile, Indonesia is also faced with challenges that require providing 2 million new jobs each year. The Job Creation Bill should be able to become a very strong legal umbrella in an effort to increase the economy and quality jobs.
Tauvik Muhammad, manager of the skills development program for the ILO Jakarta, said that Covid-19 could increase unemployment in Indonesia, which even before the pandemic had reached 20.4 percent or was quite high compared to the global average.
He said Indonesia needed policy integration. Because on the one hand, the Indonesian workforce is dominated by informal sector workers with low education, but the fact is that Indonesian society is integrated in the free market with economic digitization and industrial automation.
According to Tauvik, the challenge in creating jobs in the new adaptation period is balancing policies in the health, economic and social sectors that can only be done if Indonesia has succeeded in closing the virus spread curve.
The status of the pandemic is not over yet, but issues such as an increasing workforce must also be considered. In addition, with the Omnibus Law, it is hoped that the licensing process will be easier and will have an impact on the increasing workforce absorbed in companies or industries.
Putu Prawira, the author is a Contributor to the Indonesian Institute of Strategic Information Studies (LSISI)
