Wed, 11 Feb 2004

Security guards demand severance pay

SAMARINDA, East Kalimantan: Dozens of former employees at PT Vico Indonesia, a production sharing contractor of state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina, protested on Tuesday in front of the East Kalimantan provincial council building.

The employees, all former security guards with PT Vico, demanded the company give them severance pay.

The protest coordinator, Jamian Ali Bethan, said none of the fired security guards had received the severance pay promised to them by the company last year.

Surya Safari, an external relations officer at Vico, said the company had given the dismissed security guards severance pay, as required by the law.

However, he acknowledged that 12 of the security guards had yet to receive their severance pay, but the company was working on getting the money to them. -- JP