Aussie firms speed up Indonesian staff promotion
JAKARTA (JP): Some Australian mining companies are speeding up the promotion of Indonesian staff to replace Australian executives in anticipation of worsening anti-Australian sentiments in the future, a mining analyst said.
Paul Louis Courtier, executive director of the Indonesian Mining Association (IMA), said that with the promotion of Indonesian staff to top positions the companies expected their operations to remain unaffected, despite the possible evacuation of Australian staff in the future.
Coutrier said all the mining companies had in fact established programs to promote local workers in order to cut remuneration costs as well to develop local human resources. But they were initially doing it gradually to give foreign workers enough time to transfer their skills to local workers.
But the deterioration in relations between Indonesia and Australia over the East Timor issue over the past month had pushed the companies to accelerate their promotion programs, Coutrier said.
"We all hope that the relations between Indonesia and Australia will soon improve.
"Anyway, the current strains in the relation between both countries are a blessing in disguise for some Indonesians as it gives them a chance to take over jobs left by Australians," Coutrier told The Jakarta Post.
Coutrier refused to name the mining companies now accelerating their promotion programs.
But the country's largest coal mining company PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC) in Sangatta, East Kalimantan, earlier confirmed that it was thinking of cutting the number of its Australian workers and giving Indonesian staff greater responsibilities, in anticipation of possible anti-Australia unrest in the future.
KPC general manager Bambang Susanto said the company would not extend contracts with Australian workers who were assigned unessential jobs as part of the new employment policy.
"The expatriate staff reduction will also enable the company to cut costs," he said.
KPC is equally owned by Anglo Australian mining firm Rio Tinto and British company British Petroleum.
Most of the executives of Australian mining firms evacuated of East Kalimantan last month amid rising anti-Australia sentiments in the province.
Australian mining companies operating in the province include KPC, gold mining company PT Kelian Equatorial Mining (KEM) -- which is also a Rio Tinto subsidiary -- in Kelian district, Kutai regency and PT Arutmin Indonesia, a subsidiary of BHP Pty Ltd.
Students and youth organizations rocked the towns of Samarinda and Balikpapan last month with a series of rowdy anti-Australian demonstrations in protest against the burning of the Indonesian flag in Australia and the alleged mistreatment of Indonesian students in the country.
In one protest, the students "kidnapped" two Australian executives of Arutmin and forced them to hold a press conference to apologize to the Indonesian people for the burning of the flag.
Most of Australians fled the province on a charter flight the following day. (jsk)