Workers report hotel owners to police

BATAM, Riau: Dozens of employees of the Bukit Mutiara Hotel in Batam reported its owners on Wednesday to police in the Riau capital of Pekanbaru for dismissing them without severance pay.

Sutrisno Sembiring, one of the employees, told The Jakarta Post in Batam the one-star hotel was closed abruptly on July 31, but its owners, Hasil Ginting and Nampat Ginting, had not notified the workers prior to the closure.

"I heard the hotel will be rented as a gambling den and the management would give us severance pay when the deal is approved. But nothing has happened for almost three months now," he said.

Located on Jl. Gunung Bromo, Nagoya, Lubuk Baja subdistrict, the 19-year-old hotel employed 55 people who had worked for there for between one and 16 years. The workers demanded three months salary as severance pay, which amounts to about Rp 1 billion (US$117,647).

Bambang Yulianto, who chairs the local branch of the Indonesian Prosperity Labor Union (SBSI), vowed to continue striving for legal action against the hotel's owners if they failed to meet the demand.

Sr. Comr. Suhartono, chief of the Barelang Police Station in Batam, promised to help the investigation into the accused businessmen, now living in Jakarta. --JP