'Suara Pembaruan' denies depriving reporters' rights

JAKARTA (JP): The Suara Pembaruan daily denied a report yesterday suggesting that it had abused the rights of seven journalists who are in dispute with the management, or failed to pay their salaries.

The daily was referring to a report carried by The Jakarta Post on Monday which, quoting a petition by fellow journalists, suggested that the seven had gone 20 months without pay since they were relieved of their duties on Nov. 16, 1994.

In a letter to the Post, the management explained that it had suspended the seven journalists on the grounds that they had "consciously and deliberately violated" company rules.

"In compliance with existing labor regulations, the management continued to pay 50 percent of their salaries for the first six months," the letter said.

The management subsequently offered financial assistance to the journalists, but this gesture was turned down, it said.

The letter, signed by the publisher's president director Soedarjo and general manager Albert Hasibuan, called the Post's article "one sided" and "discrediting" of the daily's management.

They explained that the Local Committee for Settling Labor Disputes had granted the management's request to dismiss the seven journalists -- Petron Curie, Kooswadi, Isaac Sinjal, Constantinus De Gani, Djadjan Saputra, Charles Manurung, and Nelson Simanjuntak -- for violating the company's employee regulations.

The ruling was later overturned by the Central Committee for Settling Labor Disputes. The Suara Pembaruan management has since taken its case to the Jakarta State Administrative High Court to seek a reversal.

The letter also denied the Post's report that the management had ignored letters of appeal from the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Journalists Association and the Golkar faction in the House of Representatives. (26)