Rival camps of labor export companies fail to reconcile

JAKARTA (JP): The two conflicting camps in the Association of Labor Export Companies Association (Apjati) failed to reconcile on Saturday because one of the warring parties failed to attend an agreed congress.

Apjati chairman Mahfudzt Djailani expressed his disappointment over the absence of the splinter Apjati Reformasi executives despite receiving their agreement to attend the congress which was meant to reunite the two camps.

"I do not want a... conflict in the association. But if they (the Apjati Reformasi's executives) do not want to reconcile, there is no other alternative but a divorce. We will remain split," he told The Jakarta Post in a break at the congress at the Jakarta Convention Center in Senayan, Central Jakarta on Saturday.

Munir Achmad, president of labor export company PT Bina Usaha Malindo, also regretted the development. He said the other camp might have refused to come because it was afraid of not being included on the new central board.

He said that in a recent meeting with Minister of Manpower Fahmi Idris both sides agreed to attend and patch up their differences.

He said the current board's executives would lose a number of perks if they were not included on the new board. Among the perks were a portion of legal levies collected from all workers employed overseas, and information on job orders from foreign labor importers.

Abdullah Puteh and Anton Sihombing, respectively chairman and secretary-general of Apjati Reformasi, were not available for comment on Saturday.

Mahfudzt warned that the ongoing war over the recruitment tariff would also continue among labor export companies if the conflict was not resolved soon.

"This war will generate losses for all labor export companies as well as our workers," he said.

He revealed that many companies had charged workers about US$500 in a recruitment fee, while Apjati had set the recruitment fee to be at least $900 per worker.

Mahfudzt said that Apjati would work hard to reach the government target of sending two million workers abroad next year to generate an expected revenue of $5 billion for Indonesia.

About one million Indonesians are currently working overseas and generating approximately $3.5 billion in foreign exchange.

"Labor exports must be boosted to help ease unemployment at home and increase government income from the sector," he said.

In a related development, the splinter group of the All Indonesian Workers Union Federation (FSPSI Reformasi) called on the government to take over the FSPSI headquarters currently being occupied by a group of workers, and hand it over to the organization so it could continue serving the workers.

Union secretary-general Mohammad Rodja said he had contacted Datuk Bagindo, who used to chair FSPSI but had agreed to hand over the FSPSI leadership to FSPSI Reformasi's central board.

FSPSI was divided after Datuk failed to form a pure federation in the labor organization and to channel the aspirations of the sectoral trade unions.

Eleven of 13 sectoral unions have withdrawn their representatives from the federation and formed FSPSI Reformasi. It also has recently held a congress that elected Hartono as the new president and Rodja secretary-general. (rms)