KPC employees maintain blockade

The protesting employees of East Kalimantan coal giant PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC) maintained their strike and blockade on production facilities despite the Wednesday agreement reached by representatives of the employees including the charismatic chairman of the SBSI labor union Muchtar Pakpahan with KPC top management in Jakarta.

Director general of mining Surna T. Djajadiningrat confirmed that until Thursday the strike and blockade still continue.

Surna said that he had asked Muchtar to control his members in the East Kalimantan's Sangatta area and to stop the blockade of the production facilities.

"He (Muchtar) has promised to send several of his trusted men to socialize the results of the Jakarta agreement to the protesting employees because it turns out that announcing the result through phone is not effective. We expect the blockade to stop immediately," he told reporters.

KPC general affairs manager Bambang Susanto said that KPC might have to announce a force majeure situation for the second time if the blockade was not immediately stop.

Bambang pointed out that the current coal stock of 200,000 tons would only last for the next three days. He said that two ships were now awaiting supply.

He said that if KPC did make a second force majeure announcement, it would be detrimental to the country's coal industry as foreign buyers might be forced to seek other coal supplying countries due to the uncertainty of supply from Indonesia.

He said that one of the company's Japanese buyers had started questioning the continuity of supply from KPC.

Meanwhile, the East Kalimantan Kaltim Post daily reported on Friday that the KPC protesting employees demanded Muchtar to visit them in Sangatta to deliver himself the results of the Jakarta agreement.

East Kutai Regent Awang Faroek was quoted by the paper as calling on the employees to stop their strike, and to be alert not to be easily influenced by irresponsible people from outside the area who wish to see chaos in the area.

Awang also said that he had just received the Jakarta agreement on Thursday.

Some 200 employees of KPC, who are grouped in the SBSI labor union, had been on a strike since June 14 demanding a rise in salary and other benefits. They blockaded certain facility during their strike causing the company to be unable to make production. But the blockade was stopped on June 25 following the first round of talks facilitated by Awang and the local parliament.

The employees, however, resumed the blockade on Monday after the KPC management declined to fulfill their demand to pay their salary during the strike.

But at a negotiation facilitated by the Minister of Labor Affairs Bomer Pasaribu in Jakarta, the representatives of the employees including Muchtar reached an agreement with the KPC management.

In the agreement, the employees agreed to end their strike and to resort to negotiation to discuss their demands with the company, and KPC also agreed to pay 50 percent of the salary of the protesting employees during their strike. (*)