Indonesia not cutting China out in EV hub plan, minister Sandiaga Uno says
- Indonesia will continue to attract Chinese investments in its EV sector, and will address complaints by Chinese workers of poor factory conditions, the minister of tourism and creative economy says
- Sandiaga adds Indonesia will play ‘facilitator’ between the US and China, noting that Xi and Biden will attend an Asean meeting held in Jakarta this year
In an interview in Hong Kong with This Week in Asia, Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Sandiaga Uno acknowledged that the working conditions of both Chinese nationals and locals in its nickel-refining sector needed redress.
The issue has been a subject of debate recently, following unrest between Chinese and local workers in January, and a separate formal complaint filed by three Chinese workers about what they said were inhuman working conditions.
“Yes, there are some issues with the workers and this is [something] that we continue to work on very closely with China, in terms of providing a much more satisfactory working environment,” Sandiaga said.
“The working conditions, you are looking from a Chinese point of view, they have lodged a complaint. But we have complaints also from the Indonesian point of view,” he added.
On the conditions that led to antipathy between locals and Chinese workers, Sandiaga said it was necessary to “empower capacity-building for the Indonesian workers so that they can catch up and get up to speed in terms of efficiency and productivity that Chinese workers have been able to produce”.
At a conference on China-Asean connectivity in the post-pandemic era organised earlier in the day, the minister had said the government was aware that some local workers were unhappy over earning less than their Chinese counterparts.