Pertama and Nanindah, two of Drydocks World's three shipyards on Batam Island, Indonesia, re-opened for business as usual on April 26 after last week's incident at the company's third yard on the island, Graha.
Drydocks World – South East Asia (DDW-SEA) reported that more than 70 percent of shipyard staff are now at work and the company is expecting that Graha will resume operations this week.
The company said that its preliminary investigation into the Graha incident showed the majority of Drydocks World's 1,919 directly employed workforce at Graha were not involved in the incident.
Denis Welch, DDW-SEA Chief Executive Officer said that the trouble appeared to be centred on sub-contract labour rather than DDW-SEA's own directly employed workforce. The company uses around 30 sub-contractor companies at the three DDW-SEA Batam yards, which employ around 16,000 workers.
He added that the Indonesian authorities were treating the investigation into the events on April 22 as a criminal act.
The incident, which National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri labelled as "spontaneous", resulted in four workers being taken to hospital with minor injuries. Two workers have since been discharged from hospital; one is pending discharge and one is detained in hospital in a stable condition.
DDW-SEA also confirmed that senior managers from the company's parent group in Dubai had arrived in Batam to assist with the investigation and to ensure the Graha yard returned to normal working as quickly as possible.
"Since taking over the yards in 2008, we have enjoyed excellent relations between our multi-national, multi-ethnic workforce employed on Batam without a single formal complaint being lodged by any worker," said Mr Welch. "This isolated incident mars that excellent track record and we will not allow it to be repeated."
He added that the group has in place a grievance and complaints procedure at all its yards and urged employees to these procedures if they feel they are victims of racial slurs or any kind of ill treatment in the workplace.
