Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Malang, East Java – Their salaries might be too small to suffice daily needs, but loyal cigarette workers are ready to extend a helping hand as their employers face bankruptcy.
Narti, 32, had, since the morning, gathered with small-scale cigarette company employees. They were ready to head to the local Customs and Excise Office to stage a rally, demanding that the ministry regulations on the increase of tobacco excise tariff be revoked.
"If the regulation was not revoked, the company would not be able to pay the tariff," said Narti, a mother of two children. "The company would become bankrupt and we might be laid off. We are here to help the company."
Narti's job is to hand-roll cigarettes, earning Rp 9,000-9,500 (US$1) for every 1,000 bars. With a worker producing an average of 2,500 bars per day, Narti pockets Rp 135,000 a week or Rp 540,000 a month. The sum is still far below the regulated minimum pay of Rp 954,500 in Malang.
If the regulation is to stand, the workers want compensation, demanding that the head of the Finance Ministry's Fiscal Policy Agency (BKF), Anggito Abimanyu, fulfill his promise to help issue a ministerial regulation that would protect small-scale cigarette companies from unfair competition with the large-scale ones.
"We have come to make him (Anggito) pay what he promised early December last year in Jakarta," rally coordinator Joko Susianto said at the Customs and Excise office in Malang.
He said the finance minister regulation No 181/2009 on the new tariff, which requires an increase by 62.5 percent in the 2010 excise for cigarette products, was siding only with the interest of the large-scale cigarette industry.
"It's a real burden for us. We are a small-scale business but are required to pay the same price for excise as large-scale companies."
Joko added even with the implementation of the 2008 regulation on the same issue, which was later enforced in February the following year, the number of small-scale cigarette companies in the region had since decreased by almost 42 percent from 367 to 154.
The number of workers, similarly, decreased by 34,000. Secretary of the Indonesian Cigarette Industry Forum (Formasi) Paulus Suhardjo said such negative impacts could be avoided if the government implemented fair principles in dealing with small-to-medium-scale industries and large-scale ones.
The regulation, Paulus said, was considered unfair because it required an excise increase by between 3.5 percent and 5 percent to large-scale cigarette industries but between 15 and 42 percent for the small-scale ones.
Despite their low wages, Narti and tens of thousands of workers remain concerned about the fate of their employers, and appear willing to fight for their rights.