Thanks to a new policy that government officials are “pretty sure will eliminate the possibility of love affairs,” thousands of male civil servants in northern Indonesia will no longer receive paychecks. Instead, their wives will get their salaries.
The administration of Gorontalo, a small province in the island of Sulawesi, recommended earlier this year that workers transfer their salaries to their wives because of increasing complaints about marital infidelity. The transfers are now mandatory.
Gorontalo Gov. Rusli Habibie said the policy was “imperative to promote openness between officials and their wives and thus could prevent corruption practices among Gorontalo civil servants,” according to the Jakarta Post.
“Men are usually unable to control their behavior if they have too much money in their pocket,” administration spokesperson Rifly Katili said.
According to Katili, more than 90 percent of the 3,200 civil servants in Gorontalo support the policy and voluntarily transferred their salaries to their wives when the government first suggested the idea.
“I’m pretty sure this will eliminate the possibility of love affairs that undermine families,” Katili added.
Some employees were nonchalant about the new requirement.
“All this time, it is my wife who has access to my salary anyway. She has the [credit] card,” said Saleh Yusuf, a government employee in Gorontalo.
Unsurprisingly, the change is particularly popular with these officials’ wives.
“This policy really helps us,” one spouse told the Jakarta Globe, adding that she had not been entirely sure how much her husband earned prior to the new policy.
“The salary has been transferred and we are thankful for the governor’s decision,” added another woman as she checked her account information at an automated teller machine.