A fire-fighter works to extinguish burning vehicles outside
the PT Drydocks World Graha on
Indonesia's Batam island April 22, 2010
Hundreds of employees of PT Drydock World Graha in Batam, Riau Islands province, on Friday demanded that management take responsibility for the violence that happened on Thursday. The employees were gathered in front of the gates of the company's property, TV reported.
About 5,000 workers at the dry dock company rioted on Thursday, attacking company executives and foreign staff, mostly ethnic Indians, over racist remarks allegedly made by one of them. “They were provoked by an Indian employee who said Indonesian workers were stupid,” National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Zulkarnaen said. In anticipation of further violence, Batam Police deployed hundreds of officers, including troops from the Mobile Brigade to secure company property. The management declared Friday a nonworking day. Operations are set to resume on Monday.
TV reported that police had named a foreign worker as a suspect. An estimated 40 witnesses were questioned in relation to the incident. On Friday, the Batam municipal government held a meeting with the company's management. The Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration on Thursday dispatched teams to try and resolve the conflict and work out a solution between the company's Indonesian workers and foreign staff. “We regret the incident which was caused by a misunderstanding,” Muhaimin Iskandar, manpower minister, said at his office. “We have dispatched a fact-finding team to resolve the matter.
The team will monitor developments in the case and prevent similar incidents from ever occurring again.” Drydock World Graha’s 49-hectare facility, previously known as Labroy Marine’s shipyard in Batam, is managed by Singapore-based Drydock World SE Asia. The incident was just the latest social unrest to take place near a port area. A violent riot related to an eviction plan at the Tanjung Priok Port in North Jakarta last week left three municipal public order officials killed and some 140 people injured.
