REGIONAL LEADERS TO BE GIVEN ORIENTATION

Padang, W Sumatra, March 6 (ANTARA) - The government plans to give an orientation to elected governors, district heads and city mayors to assure they would carry out their job well and understand technicalities in administration, Gamawan Fauzi said.

"We are still preparing the regulation for it but it will soon be legalized so that it could be implemented as of 2011," the minister of home affairs said here on Saturday.

The minister was here as a key-note speaker at a national seminar on ideal governor and vice governor of West Sumatra organized by Perum LKBN Antara.

He said his office is still preparing a regulation on an orientation program for new regional leaders so that they would understand their tasks well as well as their philosophy and technicality of their implementation.

The regulation is made because many elected regional leaders are not bureaucrats and so they are not quite knowledgable of the technicalities of their job, he said.

He said the orientation is scheduled for a month and contains materials helpful for the implementation of their tasks.

"Within a month of orientation it is expected the elected governors, city mayors and district heads will be able to understand their task so that they could implement it well," he said.

Gamawan said his office was also preparing the implementation of a number of regulations made with regard to the position of governors as heads of regional administratin.

"Following the implementation of regional autonomy so far the role of governors as representatives of the central government seemed to have been biased," he said.

He said he had also felt it when he was a governor of West Sumatra.

"We will see if the regulations need to be improved so that the role of governors as representative of the central government is clear," he said.