Workers protest to rights body

JAKARTA (JP): Three groups of workers from different companies took protest to the National Commission on Human Rights yesterday, claiming their have been denied their basic rights.

One group of offshore drillers claimed they have been paid lower than their foreign fellow workers while workers from two factories protested mass dismissal without severance pay.

Commission members promised they would contact managers of the companies to solve the dispute amicably.

Hengki Rumampuk, spokesman of 40 seafarers who were recruited by Dutch Nedllyod Lines in 1988 claimed that the company has severely exploited them.

"They recruit us as ship crew members but in practice we have been doing the job of offshore drillers," Hengki said, adding that foreign workers offshore drillers are being paid more than they are.

Hengki said that foreign workers, mostly Portuguese, get a monthly salary of US$3,000 while Indonesians are paid only US$800 monthly.

"To emphasize the discrimination, those foreign workers are given the chance to go ashore every month while Indonesians every six months," Hengki said.

According to Hengki, the initial agreement workers work five days a week, eight hours a day but in reality the workers are forced to work for 180 consecutive days, each day amounting to 12 hours.

With the lawyers from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, the seafarers demanded that their wage be raised as high as their foreign fellows'.

"We hope that the commission will be able to help us solve this problem because various institutions cannot help on the grounds that the problem is beyond their legal jurisdiction," Hengki said.

The two other groups from garment factory PT Mayer Crocodile Indonesia in Bogor, West Java, and PT Monde Mahkota Biscuit in Ciracas East Jakarta protested their dismissal.

Eighteen workers from the garment factory said PT Mayer Crocodile fired some 170 employees in May without giving them severance pay on the pretext that the company suffered losses.

Meanwhile, five workers from Monde Mahkota Biscuit in Ciracas East Jakarta said that they had also been dismissed without severance payment on Sept. 18.

Yatini, one of the workers said that the company accused them of spreading rumors that caused unrest among the company's workers.

She said PT Monde Mahkota Biscuit has forced about 150 other workers to resign for unclear reasons. (14)