About 3,000 PPD bus workers to go on strike

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

About 3,000 bus drivers, conductors and staff of state-owned Jakarta Transportation company (PPD) planned to strike on Wednesday and attend a rally demanding President Megawati Soekarnoputri solve the company's internal problems.

Organized by the PPD branch of the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union (SBSI), the workers have two main objectives: rejecting the management's recent plan for asset divestment and demanding that full control of the management be under the city administration.

"As a state enterprise, PPD is poorly managed because too many parties are involved in its management. Under these circumstances, we suspect PPD is simply being treated as a cash cow," vice coordinator of the SBSI unit within PPD Robinson Hasibuan told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

The rallies will be held in front of the State Palace on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara, and the Ministry of Finance near Banteng square in Central Jakarta.

Bus crews had earlier threatened to go on strike and hold their rally on Tuesday.

Currently, authority over PPD financial affairs lies in the hands of the Ministry of Finance, operations with the Ministry of Transportation, management control at the office of the State Minister for State Enterprises, while control over the area of operations lies with the Jakarta administration.

The workers have been complaining for months about the plan for asset divestment, arguing that the company's fleet of 751 buses are all more than 10 years old, while of those, only 315 are roadworthy and serve only 44 routes of the 152 originally allotted by the city administration.

"The government disbursed a total of Rp 203.6 billion (US$22.8 million) in subsidy between 1996 and 2001, but we have yet to see any improvements in worker welfare, let alone new buses," Hasibuan said.

PPD currently employs 5,388 workers, who have the status of public servants, as it suspended recruitment from 1995 because its profits continued to decline, while, according to PPD spokesman Safrudin Dahlan, the amount of subsidy was not enough to cover the company's huge expenses.

Since the merging of seven private bus operators into PPD in 1985, the ratio of buses to staff is 1:12, which means that one bus is handled by about 12 crew members, a far cry from the acceptable ratio of 1:5.

The company's data shows that the average income per month is around Rp 7.5 billion, while the expenses, including salaries, fuel, maintenance, meal allowances and administration costs of PPD's 15 offices and one garage amount to an average of Rp 11 billion per month.

"When the subsidy was disbursed, we were already saddled with large debts due to the high cost of bus maintenance and insurance, the recovery of which we had to prioritize," Safrudin told the Post.

The poor management attracted public attention soon after PPD, in compliance with state policy, raised staff salaries by 70 percent to 240 percent in October 2002, from an average Rp 2.7 million to Rp 5.7 million per month starting in November.

"Afterwards, we didn't receive our salaries on time, and not the full amount. The management paid our January salary by installments, which were only completed on March, while we only received one quarter of our February salary. We have yet to receive our March salary," a bus driver, Sabari, told the Post.

Safrudin said the management had considered dismissing most of the workers, mainly administrative staff, to reach the more ideal ratio of about 1:6.

PPD finance manager A. Gani Kamaluddin said the company would pay Rp 50 million in severance pay.

However, according to bus crews, two employees, who had served 20 years and 24 years in the company and were dismissed earlier this year, received only Rp 8 million and Rp 10 million respectively in severance pay.

"The management also said the money would only be disbursed if the asset divestment plan went ahead," Hasibuan said.