'Higher pay better than donations'

'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)