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Indonesian workers protest against fuel price hike

Source
Agence France Presse - October 10, 2000

Jakarta – Hundreds of Indonesian workers protested outside the presidential palace on Tuesday to demand that a recent fuel price hike be cancelled.

The protestors, organized by the Indonesian Unions' Solidarity Forum, also asked for a 100-percent increase in minimum wages nationwide. "Eighty percent of Indonesians are laborers but they have been made objects by the power holders and businessmen just to enrich themselves," the protestors said in a statement.

Labor leaders Muchtar Pakpahan and Dita Indah Sari, jailed by former dictator Suharto for establishing independent trade unions and organizing labor protests, led Tuesday's demonstration. During Suharto's rule only one government-sponsored trade union was allowed to exist.

Speaking at the event, Pakpahan said the fuel price hike had led to increases in the prices of other commodities, hitting Indonesians doubly hard as they sought to emerge from the economic crisis that hit the country in mid- 1997. The 12-percent fuel price rise came into effect on October 1, after global oil prices surged to ten year highs.

House Speaker Akbar Tanjung was quoted by the Suara Pembaruan evening daily on Tuesday as saying the fuel hike has already led to a corresponding rise of other products over a three precent ceiling set by the government. The Indonesian government has said that the 12 percent average rise in fuel prices should only lead to a rise of up to three percent in other goods.

Fuel prices in Indonesia have long been heavily susbidized and the previous attempt to lower subsidies in 1998 resulted in mass riots which contributed to the fall of former president Suharto after 32 years in power.

Under the new price scheme, one liter of premium gasoline has jumped from 1,000 rupiah to 1,150 rupiah (0.13 dollars), kerosene from 280 to 350 rupiah, diesel from 550 to 600 rupiah and fuel oil from 350 to 400 rupiah. Trade unions and citizens' groups say the rise will impact heavily on the poor, who rely on kerosene for cooking.

The government and the International Monetary Fund have argued the main beneficiaries of the subsidies were industry leaders and smugglers who routinely sent thousands of tonnes of fuel to neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, where prices were much higher.

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