Jakarta – A protest involving hundreds of mudflow disaster victims from Besuki, Kedungcangkring and Pejarakan villages in Sidoarjo, East Java, has brought work to a halt at the Lapindo mudflow disaster site.

One of the protesters, Mudiharto, said the group had staged the protest in an effort to seek clarity from the Sidoarjo Mud Disaster Mitigation Agency on compensation payments that were supposed to have been given to disaster victims.

"They have only paid 70 percent of our compensation and we don't know when they will pay the remaining 30 percent," Mudiharto said Monday as quoted by kompas.com.

The disaster, which started in 2006, has caused massive loss of property after the mudflow buried multiple villages in the Porong area. The victims have been struggling to obtain compensation ever since.

Meanwhile, blame for the incident has been shifted away from a company conducting deep drilling in the area, Lapindo Brantas, which was widely believed to have caused the mudflow. Lapindo has insisted that the mudflow began as a result of an earthquake that struck in Central Java.