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PLN to cut employee salaries for blackout compensation
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Residential areas of Jakarta are left in total darkness as electricity transmission disruptions caused a blackout of several hours in Greater Jakarta and parts of West and Central Java on Sunday. (JP/Jerry Adiguna)
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tate-owned electricity firm PLN plans to cut salaries of its employees to pay out Rp 839 billion (US$58.7 million) in compensation for Sunday's blackout that impacted at least 21.9 million customers.
The plan was voiced by PLN strategic procurement 2 director Djoko Rahardjo Abumanan on Tuesday during a visit to the House of Representatives with PLN’s board of directors.
"We can't use the subsidy from the state budget, so we will take it from the company's budget and reduce our expenses," he said. "One of the expenses that could be reduced is employee salary. At PLN, we have [merit-based remuneration], so we will cut salaries if our workers' performance is poor."
Djoko added that the cut would not apply to the base salary but to benefits usually given in accordance with employee performance.
"The type of salary is called T2. At PLN, we have two types of salary, the first is T1 or the base salary and T2 is a merit-based salary, which will be reduced if this kind of incident happens," he added.
Sunday’s power outage was most likely the worst blackout to hit Greater Jakarta and West Java since 1997, causing traffic congestion and disruption to businesses and communications in the capital and other cities in the region.
The electricity went out at 11:50 a.m. on Sunday in a blackout that lasted more than eight hours, and power supply remained patchy until Tuesday morning, when PLN announced that the power system of Java Island had been stabilized.
