Independent team to take over Ariawest
JAKARTA (JP): The government will install an independent management team to temporarily take over the day-to-day operations of telecommunication services in West Java and Banten run by PT AriaWest International, a senior official said.
Minister of Communications Budhi Mulyawan Suyitno said on Tuesday that the continuing conflict between state-owned telecommunication company PT Telkom and its joint cooperation (KSO) partner in West Java and Banten, AriaWest, had made it necessary for the government to intervene.
"We will establish a temporary management team which will be independent and acceptable to both parties," Budhi said in a hearing with the House of Representative's Commission IV for infrastructure and transportation.
He did not say when the team will be officially installed but that the government was "working overtime" to make it happen as soon as possible.
The team's duties were mainly to ensure the continuation of telecommunication services in West Java and Banten, to resume normal day-to-day operations in the region and to ensure that employees receive their salaries, Budhi said.
Ariawest is partly owned by American telecommunication giant AT&T.
The government's move to establish the independent team followed recent threats by Telkom employees in West Java and Banten to bring services in both provinces to a standstill if the dispute between Telkom and Ariawest continued.
The employees, who are under Ariawest's management under the KSO contract, claimed the dispute had troubled their activities and made them concerned about whether they would continue to receive their salaries.
In response to the workers' protests, the House of Representatives recently called on the government to set up an independent body to temporarily take over Ariawest's management.
Telkom's director of operations Komarudin Sastrakoesoemah said that he welcomed the government's move.
"Telkom and AriaWest can fight all they like, but it is the government's duty to make sure that telecommunication services are uninterrupted," he said on the sidelines of the hearing with the House.
The temporary management would replace the existing management within the West Java and Banten operations, led by Michael Lee Towne, Komarudin said.
The dispute between Telkom and Ariawest originated from a disagreement between both parties over Telkom 's plan to buy out Ariawest's stake in the KSO partnership.
The protracted dispute between both companies over the price of Ariawest's stake had resulted in the deterioration of telephone services in West Java and Banten, also known as Regional Division (Divre) III, and both companies blamed each other for the deteriorating service.
Bambang Tri Swasono Adi, the chairman of Telkom's workers union (Sekar) in the Divre III KSO unit, who also attended the hearing, said more than 60 percent of services in the region had not been continued.
"And there are more than 90,000 applications for new telephone lines which cannot be processed," he told The Jakarta Post.
In the meantime, AriaWest rejected the government's plan to install a temporary management team, saying that any deterioration of services in the regions was caused by Telkom's move to block the KSO unit's operating funds.
"There is no need whatsoever for any 'third-party management'. If the government would like to help the people of Banten and West Java ... all it has to do is make Telkom start honoring the terms of the KSO Agreement," AriaWest's chief financial officer Stephen Dowling said in a statement on Tuesday.
AriaWest's vice president director Gatot S. Kahrmadji said that the KSO unit was short on funds because it could not obtain money collected from subscribers' monthly payments, as they were collected in a bank account under Telkom.
"For the past few months, Telkom has been attempting to starve the Divre III KSO Unit of funds by unlawfully withholding subscriber payments," he said in the statement.
Telkom has denied all allegations, saying that AriaWest has the legal means to acquire the money but refused to do so because it was determined to solve the dispute by arbitration.
Ariawest filed last month an arbitration proceeding against Telkom at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris
Komarudin said he expected the independent team formed by the government would have the legal power to freeze the disputed bank account and open a new one to collect revenue from subscribers' monthly payments.
Bambang Tri Swasono Adi said that as of June 14, the KSO unit's bank account totaled only Rp 10 billion. (tnt)