500 Bataan ecozone workers asked to go on leave

By Greg Refraccion
Inquirer News Service

MARIVELES, Bataan-MORE THAN 1,000 workers of a Korean company manufacturing sports shoes at the Bataan Economic Zone are getting restive over the seven-month delay of their salaries.

Of the firm's 1,200 workers, about 500 have been asked to go on work leave. About 80 of them joined on Thursday the protest march around the BEZ administration building and tried to put up "kubol" or makeshift protest huts within the premises but were prevented by the ecozone police.

The Inquirer could not get a confirmation from the Korean firm officials.

A BEZ source belied newspaper reports that 500 laid-off workers had staged a protest march inside the ecozone to dramatize their plight.

The Korean company reportedly needs around P40.5 million to pay the salaries of its 1,154 workers but a bank in Bataan has discontinued the release of money after learning that foreign market orders have not been coming in, a source said.

A number of shoe manufacturing companies at the BEZ have closed shop, citing the high cost of labor as the main reason. Korean investors preferred China, where labor cost was half that of the Philippines, it was learned.

A Korean firm, the Paramount Footwear, almost closed down last month when the Philippine National Bank refused to renew its credit line.

Dante Cansino, the firm's general manager, said the PNB was finally convinced that the company had received thousands of orders from the foreign markets.

"So the bank had no recourse but to grant our request for renewal of our $500,000 credit line," Cansino said.

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