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nited States-based electronics manufacturing company PT Sanmina SCI Batam, which had operated in Riau Islands’ Batam for more than a decade, closed its factory at the Batamindo industrial park earlier this month following industrial unrest.

Batamindo general manager Tjaw Hioeng said the closure was caused by a series of rallies and strikes by workers that had harmed the company’s reputation.

Tjaw cited a particular strike in late 2014 that lasted for almost two months, as the worst labor dispute the company had faced and which consequently hampered the company in delivering orders to its customers on time.

At that time, the workers, who were demanding allowances, completely blocked the factory thus paralyzing its entire operation.

“The company has been struggling to receive orders ever since,” Tjaw told The Jakarta Post on Monday. “As the management of the industrial park, we tried to explain [to the customers] to help maintain the good image of Sanmina but to no avail.”

The company started operation in Batam in 2003 with an initial investment worth US$2.5 million and employed 1,590 workers.

Following the factory closure on Oct. 3, Tjaw gave an assurance that severance payments for the workers had been made.

Tjaw said Sanmina was not the only company shutting up shop in Batam because of friction between management and workers, which had led to workers blocking or occupying factories.

A similar blockade in 2015 by the workers of PT Siemens Hearing Instrument System at Batamindo lasted two months.

Batam Free Trade Zone spokesperson Purnomo Andiantono claimed these were purely labor issues and had nothing to do with the current conditions in Batam.

“If this continues in other industrial areas, such closures could simply be repeated,” he said, calling on workers to maintain the conduciveness of Batam by conveying aspirations or protests in a dignified manner.

Separately the chairman of the Batam branch of the Federation of Indonesian Metal Workers Association’s (FSPMI), Suprapto, who led a number of strikes in 2015, denied claims that workers’ protests were behind the closures of factories in Batam.

“There are many other factors behind the closures,” he said.

Sanmina’s decision to cease its operation in Batam is one more in the growing list of foreign companies that have left the province.

Forty-six companies, of varying sizes, have stopped operations in the province since January this year, leading to more than 3,000 people being laid off, according to Batam’s Manpower Office. These companies were suppliers of major industries.

“They could not survive for a variety of reasons, but the majority was because they no longer had any orders,” said Batam Manpower Office head Rudi Syakyakirty.