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ational Police chief Gen. Sutarman has given his assurances to the business community that the police will do their utmost to maintain security and legal certainty for investors and prospective investors, given their important role in creating job opportunities.

'€œI assure all businesspeople who are investing or plan to establish businesses in Indonesia that they will be safe in conducting their business activities in the country,'€ Sutarman said at a meeting with the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) in Jakarta on Wednesday.

He added that investors played an important role in contributing to the people'€™s social welfare; so their safety should be guaranteed.

Apindo chairman Sofjan Wanandi said at the meeting that Indonesia, a country with more than 240 million people and a labor force of over 110 million, needed to maintain a good reputation as a safe place for labor-intensive, as opposed to capital-intensive, manufacturing.

Workers staged street demonstrations and strikes in several major cities late last year, demanding increases of up to 50 percent in the minimum wage for this year.

But some of the demonstrations turned violent, causing a number of factories to cease production as well as disrupting public transportation services. South Korean Chamber of Commerce (Kocham) president CK Song raised the concerns of investors from his country over the increasing radicalism within Indonesia'€™s trade unions.

Song said more than 2,200 Korean companies were now operating in Indonesia and employing more than 1 million people, but they had become increasingly worried about the mounting labor unrest, making some wary of expanding their operations.

Cahya, chairman of Apindo'€™s Riau branch, complained that Batam, which introduced the highest minimum wage in Indonesia, was home to ongoing labor protests for even higher wages, even though companies in the area were paying the new minimum wage as determined by the regional wage council. '€œThere seem to be third-party provocateurs behind the latest wave of protests,'€ Cahya added.

Sutarman shared Cahya'€™s concerns, saying he suspected similar provocation behind the labor protests in other cities. '€œWe will continue to investigate whether or not other parties are involved in provoking union members and non-governmental organizations [NGOs] to participate in street protests or rallies, and we will deal firmly with anyone found to be violating the law,'€ he said. (dwa)