Binawan Praduta denies leaving workers stranded

Binawan Praduta denies leaving workers stranded

JAKARTA (JP): Labor supplier PT Binawan Praduta broke its long silence yesterday to deny reports that it had extorted money from workers and had broken its promise to send over 1,700 job seekers to South Korea.

The Jakarta-based company allegedly took Rp 1.1 million (US$500) from each job seeker lured by its promise that they would earn a monthly wage of $300 in South Korea.

Hundreds of the job seekers, still undergoing job training in the West Java town of Cianjur, staged a demonstration at the local legislative council last week, demanding that the government help them.

The company's director Saleh Alwaini called a press conference yesterday to say that all the allegations were untrue and that he was ready to give back the workers' money and be punished if he was proven guilty of deceiving the job seekers.

He said that more than 1,000 of the job seekers had been dispatched to South Korea as promised and the rest would be sent as soon as the Korean embassy granted them the necessary visas.

The late issue of the visas caused the delay for so many workers, he said. "So it is not true that we have deceived, or extorted money from the workers."

Allegations that the labor supplier had cheated the job seekers have received wide coverage from the local mass media after last week's protest at the Cianjur legislative council, where the workers demanded that the company return their money.

Alwaini said his company would return the recruitment fee if workers who have yet to depart resigned from the program.

The Republika newspaper reported yesterday that the Cianjur administration has set up a special team to investigate the case.

PT Binawan Praduta, in cooperation with the South Korean Federation of Small Businesses, has received orders for the supply 1,780 Indonesian workers, to be employed in companies in South Korea.

The workers were promised employment as trainees with a monthly wage of around $300 for a one-year contract. They were told that when their contract expired they would be returned to Indonesia and then employed in Korean companies operating here. (rms)