PT Freeport workers to hold rally May 1 as company set to resume export
Tuesday, April 25 2017 - 12:59 AM WIB
The news portal quoted Tri Puspita, a senior member of the SPSI labor union at the company, as saying that the rally will be held among others to protest the suspension of company workers since February and the lay-off of another thousands of contractors? workers, and to protest the ?criminalization? of Sudiro, head of the PT Freeport SPSI labor union.
According to data from the Mimika Regency Manpower Office, as per mid-April 2017, a total of 1,190 PT Freeport workers have been suspended, and another 2,457 workers hired by company contractors have been laid off.
Tri said that the decision to suspend the workers was made by PT Freeport without consultation with the labor union. She said that about 40 percent of her colleagues at the labor union was affected by the suspension, raising suspicions that the company?s real motivation was to get rid of members of the union by veiling it with efficiency reason.
Elsewhere, Tri said that PT Freeport workers have protested the ongoing legal case faced by Sudiro, the charismatic Head of SPSI labor union at PT Freeport, who in the past had caused serious trouble for PT Freeport for staging massive workers strikes.
Sudiro is now being detained at the local police and is facing the court for allegedly embezzling some Rp 3.3 billion of SPSI funds. Virgo Henry Solossa, a former head of SPSI Mimika Chapter, filed the lawsuit against Sudiro.
Tri said that the criminalization against Sudiro must be stopped as it?s loaded with interests including that of PT Freeport management who wants to get rid of Sudiro from the company.
PT Freeport, a local subsidiary of US Freeport McMoRan Inc, said that the decision to suspend its permanent workers since February, and the move by its contractors to lay off its workers, was made because the company had to trim down production activities as it could no longer make export in the wake of the introduction of a new government regulation in January. Without export, the company could only supply part of its output to East Java-based PT Smelting, which operates the only copper smelter in the country.
According to the regulation, miners will be allowed to continue export of mineral concentrates including copper concentrates produced by firms such as PT Freeport for another five years on certain conditions including converting their mining permit status from mining contract of work to special mining business license (IUPK), make commitment to build domestic smelters, and pay higher export duty of 7.5 percent.
PT Freeport has agreed to convert into IUPK but demanded the IUPK to have similar fiscal and legal terms as set out in the COW to help assure the company?s investment stability. The government has turned down the request, trigging the current dispute, and forcing both sides to be engaged in lengthy negotiation talks.
The government, however, has recently issued a temporary IUPK to allow PT Freeport resume export while maintaining the COW. The government has also allowed PT Freeport to pay export duty of 5 percent until October, by which time ongoing negotiations between the two are expected to be concluded.
PT Freeport is expected to soon resume export of copper concentrates as the company has obtained an export permit from the Ministry of Trade with an export quota volume of 1.1 million tons in line with the recommendation letter made by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Bisnis Indonesia reported on Tuesday quoting company Spokesman Riza Pratama. The export recommendation letter is valid for a year. (*)