Mining industry warned of floating labor

JAKARTA (JP): Director General of Mines Kuntoro Mangkusubroto reminded mining industry executives yesterday of the growing competition in the employment market ahead of the implementation of free trade in the region.

"By the year 2020, we will find professional workers moving unhindered through Asia-Pacific countries, which will no longer have trade restrictions," Kuntoro said at the opening ceremony of a national conference on public and private partnership in training and vocational education for the mining industry in Indonesia.

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum has agreed to liberalize trade and investment by 2010 for its developing member economies and by 2020 for its developed members.

Kuntoro said that current restrictions on foreigners' employment in national firms will no longer be possible "unless we are well prepared to face retaliation from other countries."

At the conference, which was sponsored by PT Redecon -- an Indonesian mining consultantcy -- Box Hill Institute of Technical and Further Education, of Australia, and the Directorate General of Mines, he said that approximately 2.6 percent of national income should come from the mining sub-sector.

"This will requires strategic policies to accomplish. Human resource development aimed at fulfilling increasing the demand for a skilled and professional workforce through effective implementation of education and training programs is an important component of such a policy," he said.

A deputy chairman of the Indonesian Mining Association, M. Simatupang, noted that foreign companies still dominate the Indonesian mining sector, which employs 30 percent of the country's 57,000 foreign workers.

According to data from the Ministry of Manpower, the employment of 57,000 foreign workers costs Indonesia US$2.4 billion a year, compared to the earnings of $600 million repatriated by 290,000 Indonesians working overseas.

Ismid Hadad, the chairman of Redecon, said that the conference was aimed at solving problems in vocational education and training which are badly needed by mining firms' workers in the country. (13)