'Higher pay better than donations'

JAKARTA (JP): Legislators criticized yesterday a recent pledge by business tycoons to allocate 2 percent of their net profits for the development of small businesses, saying that the funds would be better used to pay higher wages to workers.

"What is needed for the improvement of small enterprises is not donations but equal treatment from the government and equal opportunities to do businesses," a member of the House Representatives' Commission VI, Soenarjo Haddade, said during a hearing with Minister of Industry Tunky Ariwibowo yesterday.

Almost 100 business tycoons, after participating in a course on the state ideology Pancasila in Bali last month, promised in the "Bali Declaration" that they would help narrow the gap between large and smaller businesses. Some of them proposed that big companies allocate 2 percent of their net profits for such a purpose.

Legislators said yesterday that Indonesian workers need an improvement in their wages, which are still very low.

Minimum wages are set at between Rp 2,200 (96.78 U.S. cents) and Rp 4,750 per day, varying between provinces. Many companies fail to pay the minimum to their employees, a practice which sometimes leads to strikes.

Haddade said he was suspicious that the Bali Declaration might have been engineered to dampen rumors concerning the widening gap between the rich and the poor, between big and small businesses and between developments in the western part and the eastern part of Indonesia.

Royani Haminullah of the Indonesian Democratic Party's faction in the House told the hearing, presided over by commission chairman Erie Soekardja, that the tycoons who produced the Bali Declaration should not become a pressure group which can interfere in government policy-making.

He said he was concerned about the concentration of businesses, from those upstream to the down-stream tributaries of certain industries, in the hands of a small group of people.

Iskandar Manji of the ruling Golkar party reminded Tunky about his own pledge, made after his induction as minister of industry, that he would provide equal business opportunities to all companies in the country.

Tunky told the hearing that the intention of the Bali Declaration was good because it was aimed at helping small business.

The minister said the concentration of businesses into certain groups of companies occurred because they wanted to improve efficiency and ensure adequate supplies of materials.

"A few efficient companies will be better than a large number of inefficient ones," Tunky added.

Meanwhile, Director General of Light Industries Firdaus Ali, responding to questions on the current shortage of raw rattan supplies to the furniture industry, said the supply shortages were the result of an increase in illegal exports of raw rattan.

He acknowledged that there have been shortages of rattan since September 1994 in Greater Jakarta; Cirebon, West Java; and Surabaya, East Java. (kod)