JP/6/Fire/0
Still no answers in suspicious factory blaze
JAKARTA (JP): The National Police Headquarters is still in the dark over the exact cause of a huge fire which destroyed a television factory in Tangerang late last month due to a lack of material evidence.
"We need more time to determine the cause of the blaze," Maj. Eddy T.G., who leads a team from the National Police forensic laboratory, told The Jakarta Post yesterday. "We've come to the scene four times and collected as much material evidence as we could, but so far we haven't found anything which would determine the cause of the blaze at the firm."
While police are still in the dark about the fire that razed the 14,000-square-meter PT Textronic Electronics Permai (TPE) factory complex in Tangerang on March 25, others have put forth their own conclusions.
Employees at the factory who wished to remain anonymous, have said that the fire is a textbook case of insurance fraud arson.
In a written report to the executives of the company, security guards of the factory said that a group of people tried unsuccessfully to burn the plant on March 20 -- five days before the actual fire occurred and that they reported the situation to management at that point. Management's response to incident was to do nothing.
Security reports also said that on March 11 a group, led by Grundig employee Eddy Yuli, came to the factory with nine trucks to remove nearly 1000 television sets without the proper documentation.
The factory was the only production center of the publicly- listed firm, which produced and assembled television sets and electronic goods bearing brand names such as Grundig, Paladium, Okano and SEG.
Although no fatalities were reported, the three-hour-long blaze, which started around 4 a.m. on Friday of March 25 destroyed many machines in the factory.
"There were many high-tech machines inside the plant which cost millions of rupiahs each," said Tony Demos, the company's manager for personnel and general affairs. He gave no indication if the 'machines' inside the plant was assembly equipment or if some of the factory's inventory had been replaced.
He did ad that the incident has been reported to the Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam).
The company's share price on the Jakarta Stock Exchange Friday, the last of the weekly trading, remained unchanged at Rp 3,700 (US$1.73), although no transactions have been recorded since the incident.
The company is a subsidiary of the Asia Permai Group, a widely diversified business group formerly owned by business tycoon H. Mohamad Amid, who reportedly has sold the plant to PT Gading Mandala Utama, a subsidiary of the widely-diversified Humpuss group.
Meanwhile, executives of PT Grundig International Indonesia (GII), which had its products assembled at the factory of PT Textronic Electronics Permai, said that their firm will set up their own factory later this year. (bsr)